The girl looked at him. She swallowed nervously. He could see the movement of her throat.
“I’ll—tell you,” she replied desperately. “I came to see—you, because you won’t come to see me. I—I don’t believe in silly old conventions. You—you’d come to me if you—were fond-of-me” (she blurted out the three words in one terrified syllable), “so I—come to you.”
Any one half-way normal would have laughed outright. Irene was so absurdly out of harmony with her speech. She was as shrinking and virginal as her words were shameless.
But Stacey was beyond humor. He was living in a state of nervous exasperation bordering on madness. “Oh, I see!” he said icily. “A declaration!”
Her face flamed. “You can be insulting if you want to!” she cried, with a sudden angry sincerity. Then she went on with her speech. “And when I came and—asked for you, your man—told me you were just—going away again—in a few minutes. And I thought—that is, I decided—I mean, take me with you!”
He stared at her in amazement and for an instant did feel a small flicker of amusement. The young woman’s polite offer chimed in so well with Whittaker’s suggestion that they needed another girl.
“That’s very kind of you,” he said coolly, “but I don’t think you’d like the place. I’m going out to Bell’s Tavern at Clarefield. It’s a bit rough there and not well thought of in Vernon society. Greatly as I should enjoy your companionship, I fear you’d find yourself rather disapproved of in the best Bolshevik circles on your return.”
She winced under his words and flushed crimson, but she faced him, not unheroically. “You’re hateful!” she cried. “But I—I’ll go—if you’ll take me!”
All the exasperation that he was feeling within him burst loose suddenly upon poor Irene, who had nothing to do with causing it.
“You little fool!” Stacey said savagely, “even the idiots in your club have got more sense than you! They don’t know anything about facts, and you don’t, either. But they know enough to let them alone. You go home and play with your theories and don’t mix them up with facts any more. If I had so much as a shadow of a fancy for you I’d take you with me. But I haven’t—luckily for you! I don’t care two beans about you! Now run along home.”