"So nice to have you, Mr. Lennox." Alice McVeagh shook hands magnificently. Everything about her was magnificent and overpowering. "Gabby, dear, have you met the gentlemen? Jordan Lennox ... Sam Cooper. Gabby Valentine." She overpowered Lennox. "Sam tells me you're an author, Mr. Lennox. Do you write all night?"
Lennox pulled himself together before the Presence. "No," he answered in the voice of the second son of the Marquis of Suffolk. "I work from nine to five, Mrs. McVeagh."
"But how disappointing. Aren't you an artist?"
"No, Mrs. McVeagh, I'm a business man. I sell ideas for a living."
"Oh dear! And I had such a lovely picture of you ... working all night and smoking opium."
"Only when he's plastered," Cooper grinned.
Lennox looked at him stonily. Poor Jake! Standing there on his best behavior, tall and erect with his hands at his side; keeping his face wooden and unrecognizable, trying to belong on Alice McVeagh's terms, and destroying himself before Gabby Valentine. To his hostess he tried to appear austere, kindly, infallible and sophisticated. To Gabby he seemed hostile and unyielding. If only Cooper had come five minutes later. When he finally departed with the hostess and Lennox turned to resume the intimacy with Gabby, it was too late.
"Gabby...." he began.
"No," she interrupted, bitterly disappointed. "No. It was only the candle-light." She took a deep breath. Her smile was no longer a private matter between them. "Please forget everything I said. I thought you—" She broke off.
"You thought I what?" Lennox asked sharply. He was deeply hurt by her abrupt change.