"Come here a moment, my dear one," he said. "I have to speak to you."
Marise hesitated. Her brain was not clear. She felt dazed, as if Zélie had boxed her ears, as she had boxed Tony's earlier. She longed for sympathy. No one—not even Garth himself!—had ever been so horrid to her before, as Zélie had.
Severance took her hand and drew her gently over the threshold into a private sitting-room much like Miss Marks's. Then, when she was safely inside the room, he shut the door, locked it, and jerked out the key.
"Tony!" cried Marise. She felt as if some scene in one of her plays had come true. Except that—Tony wasn't the villain who locked the heroine in. Surely he wasn't the villain!
"This isn't the right time for a joke," she said.
"And this isn't a joke," said Severance.
"Well, unlock the door at once, please, and let me out," she insisted. "I must go——"
"Where must you go?" he asked.
"Where! Ho—back, of course."
"To Garth—after what happened between us three at his house this evening? It's impossible for you to go back to him, Marise. He can't expect it himself. When you came away to-night—if he knew you came—he must have known the whole thing was finished, the farce played out."