meeting of eyes. Stupid, stupid, stupid. All that did was give him free rein to contemplate her profile. She could feel his look, feel it as clearly as she had felt the brush of his arm, the nudge of his knee, the warmth of his breath as they had set the table. Set the table and unsettled her, that’s what they’d done, as he had brushed and nudged and warmed. Well, she vowed inwardly as she outwardly joined in the talking and joking, tomorrow she would avoid this sort of scrutiny if she had to sit in the damn attic by herself. Then the following morning they’d all go home, and that would be the end of it. And she would not, absolutely not, entertain any shreds of regret. * * * * Sunday, Leslie clung to the group like a limpet. A couple times he tried to maneuver her off by herself, but she foiled the efforts, so he accepted that the day would be spent en masse. From the lazy perusal of the Sunday paper, with much passing back and forth of sections and a joint effort at the crossword puzzle that left in doubt whether six heads were better than one, but definitely proved they produced more erasures.
