"Not come—never?" Lycurgus brought his hand forward in the old familiar gesture. "Oh, Miss Robson, why do you make me so sorrowful? For just a drink.... You would not even have to taste it! Ah, I do not understand these American women!"
She escaped swiftly and put on her things. As she passed out through the café again, shrill laughter followed her through the door. She hurried along Third Street. At the crossing of Howard Street she was aware that some one had come up to her. She turned. It was Sawyer Flint. His face was very red and his eyes almost swallowed in rolls of puffy flesh.
"I'm drunk," he said, thickly. "I know that. You don't have to tell me I'm drunk!... What was the matter? Did I spill the beans? I spilled the beans, I know. You don't have to tell me I spilled the beans. You lost your job, eh? On my account you lost it? Well, do you know I don't give a damn if you did? That ain't any place for you.... That other dame ... she thought I was going to buy her a drink. Well, she had another thought coming. I don't buy drinks for any of them. I buy for you or not at all.... For you or not at all! I think I'll go out and see old lady Condor now. I want to get rid of her. No time like the present. That's my motto—no time like the present! You don't have to tell me I made you lose your job. I know! But I don't give a damn. Do you understand? Matter of fact, that's the only decent thing I've done for twenty years. And remember, whenever you want your job back.... You know, just because you're game. I take my hat off to anybody...."
He gave a sudden lurch and Claire escaped.
She thought at first of going directly home, but she discovered that it was only nine o'clock and she dreaded to think of listening to the pallid chatter of Miss Proll, the little seamstress. Then she would be forced to invent an excuse for her early home-coming and she had grown tired of inventing excuses.
She decided to look up Nellie Whitehead. She found her at home, wielding an electric iron and in a state of comfortable disorder from her straggling hair down to her frayed Japanese straw slippers.
"Well, Robson, how goes it?" Nellie said, testing the heated iron with a moist finger. "Don't tell me you've lost your job!"
"That's what I came to do," Claire returned as she threw her hat and coat to one side.
Miss Whitehead with fine discrimination changed the subject. "I'm going to get married next week," she announced.
"To ... to Billy Holmes?"