Chapter 22: How Could You, Mazie?

As Miss Dorothy herself had said, it could not, of course, continue. She came once, and once again to see Keith; and in spite of her efforts to make her position clear to him, her secret still remained her own. Then, on the third visit, the dreaded disclosure came, naturally, and in the simplest, most unexpected way; yet in a way that would most certainly have been the last choice of Miss Dorothy herself could she have had aught to say about it.

The two, Keith and Dorothy, had had a wonderful hour over a book that
Dorothy had brought to read. They had been sitting on the porch, and
Dorothy had risen to go when there came a light tread on the front
walk and Mazie Sanborn tripped up the porch steps.
“Well, Dorothy Parkman, is this where you were?” she cried gayly. “I was hunting all over the house for you half an hour ago.”

“DOROTHY PARKMAN!” Keith was on his feet. His face had grown very white.

Dorothy, too, her eyes on Keith’s face, had grown very white; yet she managed to give a light laugh, and her voice matched Mazie’s own for gayety.

“Were you? Well, I was right here. But I’m going now.”

“You! but—Miss Stewart!” Keith’s colorless lips spoke the words just above his breath.

“Why, Keith Burton, what’s the matter?” laughed Mazie. “You look as if you’d seen a ghost. I mean—oh, forgive that word, Keith,” she broke off in light apology. “I’m always forgetting, and talking as if you could really SEE. But you looked so funny, and you brought out that ‘Dorothy Parkman’ with such a surprised air. Just as if you didn’t ever call her that in the old school days, Keith Burton! Oh, Dorothy told me you called her ‘Miss Stewart’ a lot now; but—”

“Yes, I have called her ‘Miss Stewart’ quite a lot lately,” interposed Keith, in a voice so quietly self-controlled that even Dorothy herself was almost deceived. But not quite. Dorothy saw the clenched muscles and white knuckles of his hands as he gripped the chair-back before him; and she knew too much to expect him to offer his hand in good-bye. So she backed away, and she still spoke lightly, inconsequently, though she knew her voice was shaking, as she made her adieus.

“Well, good-bye, I must be going now, sure. I’ll be over to-morrow, though, to finish the book. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” said Keith.

And Dorothy wondered if Mazie noticed that he quite omitted a polite “Come again,” and if Mazie saw that as he said the terse “Good-bye” he put both hands suddenly and resolutely behind his back. Dorothy saw it, and at home, long hours later she was still crying over it.

She went early to the Burtons’ the next forenoon.

“I came to finish the book I was reading to Mr. Keith,” she told Susan brightly, as her ring was answered. “I thought I’d come early before anybody else got here.”

She would have stepped in, but Susan’s ample figure still barred the way.

“Well, now, that’s too bad!” Susan’s voice expressed genuine concern and personal disappointment. “Ain’t it a shame? Keith said he wa’n’t feelin’ nohow well this mornin’, an’ that he didn’t want to see no one. An’ under no circumstances not to let no one in to see him. But maybe if I told him’t was you—”

“No, no, don’t—don’t do that!” cried the girl hurriedly. “I—I’ll come again some other time.”

On the street a minute later she whispered tremulously: “He did it on purpose, of course. He KNEW I would come this morning! But he can’t keep it up forever! He’ll HAVE to see me some time. And when he does— Oh, if only Mazie Sanborn hadn’t blurted it out like that! Why didn’t I tell him? Why didn’t I tell him? But I will tell him. He can’t keep this up forever.”

When on a second and a third and a fourth morning, however, Dorothy had found Susan’s figure barring the way, and had received the same distressed “He says he won’t see no one, Miss Dorothy,” from Susan’s plainly troubled lips, Dorothy began to think Keith did mean to keep it up forever.