The other laughed again. “Sure! I can, but you wouldn’t go. Too much of a high-minded puritan. Why, you wouldn’t even end up that dinner we had in Paris in any decent way! I’m going out to Bell’s at Clarefield for the night.”
“All right,” said Stacey, “so will I, if you’ll take me.”
“Well, well, the sky has fallen! My last illusion’s gone! War, thy name is corruption!” Whittaker exclaimed. “Sure! Glad to have you!” he added genially. “Now let’s figure it out. I’ve got a little girl I’m going to take along. We can squeeze you in all right—all the cosier, what? But you’d better go and dig up some one yourself and get your car.”
Stacey shook his head. “No, I’ll ride with you—if I won’t be butting in. Maybe I’ll find some one out there.”
“Maybe,” the other returned dubiously. “But everybody will be pretty much paired off.”
“Drive around to my house and we’ll have a drink while I get a few things together.”
“All right.” The car leaped forward.
In Stacey’s mind the will to have Marian, the will not to have her, and the anger persisted, but underneath. Above, as the active part, was the matter of this trivial escapade. His dissent from Whittaker’s suggestion that he get his own car and bring another young lady was not due to distaste—nothing so fastidious as that could get a hearing now—but to Stacey’s positive fear of being left alone. If he were left to himself, nothing, as night fell and his longing deepened, could prevent his going to Marian. He must be prevented.
“Parker,” he said to the man who took Whittaker’s snowy fur coat in the hall, “I’m going away again for a day or two. You’ll tell Mr. Carroll when he gets in. First, please get us some whiskey and a siphon—Scotch, Whittaker?”
“Sounds good.”