"When?"
"Just as soon as Mr. Wilson can arrange his business. I went once with Tom—steerage, before the war. Good Lord! I'm going to have a stateroom, Anne, and I'm going to tip, God, how I am going to tip. Pay human beings, 'lackeys,' 'wage slaves,' to do the most menial things I can think of. I hope I'm seasick all the time just to——"
Merle broke off and her eyes invited some one who had just entered the door. The next moment a heavy young man whose well-cut clothes and expensive tie could not refine the overfed body, came forward.
"Anne, let me present Mr. Wilson. Ben, this is Anne you've heard me speak about, Mrs. Roger Barton."
His bold, brown eyes summed up Anne's fair delicacy, and he smiled approval of Merle's friend. But Anne felt that as long as Merle wanted him he would find no real interest in any other woman. He was shrewd and would know when Merle worked him, but it would please him to be so worked at his own pleasure. Merle's childish curls and violet eyes and scarlet mouth saying bitter, worldly things, had caught his jaded interest and filliped it to stinging passion, so far above the torn and frayed sample he had bought at extravagant prices, that the man was humble and grateful. Perhaps he, too, in his own way, was searching for Beauty. Besides, it gave him a pleasant sense of the security of the world he helped to make to have taken Merle from Black Tom O'Connell. In some way it justified the existence of things as they were, proved the tottering foundations of the movements that had begun to give him a good deal of trouble with his labor.
He was so plainly in love with Merle, it surprised Anne that his look was no grosser than it was, for it was evidently difficult for him to sit near and touch her in no way. If Merle were conscious of his restraint she did not show it, but after a few moments it got on Anne's nerves, and she rose. Merle rose too, insisting that Mr. Wilson stay where he was and finish the tea the waitress had just brought.
"I'll be back. I'm just going to the door with Anne. You wait here, honey."
Merle hurried after Anne.
"When's Tom coming back, do you know?" she whispered. "I saw in the papers he is out of town."
"Yes. No, I don't know; in a few days I think."