"No?" Stillman found himself laughing uneasily. "How gratified you must be!"
She put out a hand across the table, laying it lightly on his arm.
"Listen. It's really nothing to be flippant about.... Not that I care, in a way. But really, you know, you should have told me about—about that little arrangement with Mrs. Condor."
"Ah, then they dragged that in, too!" escaped him. "Your aunt must be a rapid talker!"
"Oh, it doesn't take long to cover the ground when one female relation decides to be nasty to another.... And, then, I'm not quite a fool—now.... Understand, I'm not blaming you ... but it would have been fairer if I had known."
He leaned forward eagerly. "Would you, in that case, have...."
"It's possible," she broke in suddenly. "Of course I've suspected something from the first ... and ... well, as a matter of fact...." She shrugged and reached again for her frappé, sliding a cherry from the crumpled straw, drooping over the glass's rim, toward her mouth. Stillman found the gesture charming, but he was not sure whether her answer suited him or not. Of course, she had seen through and accepted the transparencies of his first business ruse. But she also had subtly urged its justification. In this case.... In other words, she might accept gratuities under pressure! He felt that he was narrowing his spiritual eyes as he watched her cutting the bright red of the cherry with her white lips.
"And then," she went on, suddenly, touching the soft ice in the glass before her with a shrinking finger, "aside from everything else, what you planned to-night was stupid.... How could you have imagined that I cared."
"That you cared!" He felt that he was laughing with sneering bitterness. "Do you always think of yourself? How about me? What if I cared? It's possible, you know—just possible!"
She brought her hands suddenly up in a movement of clasped defense. He hung on her reply with white-lipped eagerness.