She studied him again, with the same semi-circular motion of the jaw. She might have been weighing his proposal.
“Say, is this one of them club initiation stunts, or have you just got a noive?”
“Am I to take that as a yes or a no?”
“And am I to take you as one of them smart-Alecks, or a coily-headed nut?”
He saw a way out. “I’m generally considered a curly-headed nut.”
“Then it’s me for the exit-in-case-of-fire, so ta-ta.” She laughed back at him over her shoulder. “Wish you luck with your next.”
But fate was already on him in another form. A lady of fifty or thereabouts was coming up the path, refined, sedate, mistress of herself, the one type of all others most difficult to accost. All the same he must do it. He must keep on doing it till some one yielded to his suit. The rebuffs to which he had been subjected did no more than inflame his will.
Approaching the new sibyl with the same ceremoniousness, he repeated the same words in the same precise tone. The lady stood off, eyed him majestically through a lorgnette, and spoke with a force which came from quietude.
“I know who you are. You’re Rashleigh Allerton. You ought to be ashamed with a shame that would strike you to the ground. I’m a friend of Miss Marion Walbrook’s. I’m on my way to see her and shall not mention this encounter. We work on the same committee of the League for the Suppression of Men’s Clubs. The lamentable state in which I see you convinces me once more of the need of our work, if our men are to become as we hope to see them. I bid you a good afternoon.”