She gave him the tips of her fingers. He returned their languid pressure and departed.
As he drifted down the hall he heard her calling, half gaily, half derisively, after him:
"Don't decide on anything rash now.... Sleep over it!..."
He thought it over for three days and when he called on Lily Condor again he found her divorced from her languishing mood. She was dressed for dinner down-town, and he had to confess she had made the most of what remained of her flaming hair and dazzling complexion.
He felt that she guessed the reason for his visit, although she took care to let him force the issue.
"About Miss Robson," he said, finally, "I've concluded to take you at your word."
Lily Condor smoothed out her gloves and laid them aside. "Take me at my word? You're welcome to the suggestion, if that is what you mean. As a matter of fact I wasn't serious."
He was annoyed to feel that he was flushing. He could not fathom her, but he had a conviction that she had been serious and that this attitude was a mere pose. "Nevertheless, I think it can be managed," he insisted. "And I want you to help me."
She listened to his plan. "What you will call a Daddy-Long-Leggish pretense," he explained to her with an attempt at facetiousness. "You to do the hiring and ... and yours truly to provide the wherewithal. Until things look up a bit. Of course then ... why, naturally, when things look up a bit for her...."