Louise, as he spoke, had been steadying herself to make reply. Now she raised a hand for him to desist. The gesture was simple, but he obeyed the implied command. Perhaps it was the picture that she made in her anger that warned him. She stood straight, shoulders back, head up, eyes gazing unflinchingly into his; a moving figure of womanly dauntlessness, had there been eyes there thus to appraise her attitude.
"Mr. Jesse," she said in a clear tone, picking her words with a cutting deliberation, "you are not, I have heard, deficient in intelligence. A very short time ago you had the hardihood to proffer me the use of one of your cars. I declined for the same reason that I now repeat in refusing your proffer of the use of your opera box. There is no imaginable reason why I should accept such favors at your hands. I told you that before. And you knew it before I told you. My acquaintanceship with you is merely casual. But, since you force me to it by disregarding what I said before, permit me to say now, explicitly and I hope finally, that I am not conscious of the least desire to become further acquainted with you."
Judd choked on a gloatful cough. While Louise had been speaking he had been grinning malevolently at Jesse, the grin saying, as plainly as words: "Well, I was right, wasn't I? You're properly shrivelled, aren't you?"
Jesse smiled chagrinedly and, as he imagined, conciliatingly. But he evaded her direct gaze, and his wholly unconvincing assumption of the grand manner had quite departed. He was not, however, appreciably disturbed. Jesse had a habit of discounting such setbacks in advance. The stock market and women required deft manipulation, he considered, and his fame as a manipulator was established. The citadel, finally scaled, would be the more inviting for the difficulty of the besiegement. He entertained no doubts as to the outcome. In the meantime Louise could enjoy her schoolgirl heroics. He was not unfamiliar with that sort of thing. But in time they all sensed the glamour of the advantages he so well knew how to dangle before them. These thoughts danced agreeably before Jesse's mental vision even at the moment when he felt himself, with no sense of degradation, to be the target of Louise's scorn.
"Well, I am sorry, Miss Treharne, that you still seem to misunderstand me," said Jesse, attempting the tone of one whose sorrow overtops his mortification.
"It is because I do understand you that I speak as I do," replied Louise with perfect self-possession. Judd choked again in the gleefulness of his vindication and Jesse shot him a malignant glance. Then and there Jesse began to outline a little plan whereby, by means of "market" pressure, he calculated that he could promptly and effectually change Judd's attitude.
"I prefer to believe, Miss Treharne," said Jesse, "that you are indisposed and that upon reflection you will be sorry that——"
"I am perfectly well," interposed Louise in a tone of cold finality, "and I shall not be sorry." Then she passed up the stairs to her mother's apartments.
"Now will you be good!" broke out Judd, chuckling vindictively, when she had gone. "Say, Jesse, I wonder if you feel so much like a clipped and trimmed Lothario as you look?"
Jesse, his mask off, growled something inarticulate by way of reply. Then: "Are you for the club?" he asked Judd. He decided that he might as well test the strength of the screws upon Judd at once. They went out together.