“It’ll be so early. Won’t that be a lot of trouble for a very little pleasure?”
“But if I think the trouble’s worth it?”
“Then I’d love to have you.”
She held out her hand and let it linger in his clasp. Other revellers, returning from theatres and dinners, passed them. For the first time that day she didn’t seem to care who guessed that he loved her.
“It’s too late to ask you up,” she whispered regretfully. “It’s been a nice day in spite of—of everything, Meester Deek. Thank you.”
She withdrew her hand and darted from him, as if fearing that, if she stayed, she might commit herself irrevocably. He saw her gray eyes smiling pityingly down on him as the iron cage shot up.
CHAPTER X—AND NOTHING ELSE SAW ALL DAY LONG
He had lost count of days in the swiftness of happenings. As he drove uptown to fetch her, he wondered why the streets were so quiet. He pulled out his watch; it was past eight. Not so extraordinarily early! His watch might be wrong. His eye caught a clock; it wasn’t Then the knowledge dawned on him that the emptiness of the streets and his sense of earliness were due to the leisure which betokens Sunday morning.