"In the name of—!" Words failed the indignant Kykie. She grabbed her tea-tray and floundered from the room.
At dinner-time, white and fateful as a narcissus with a broken stalk, the girl faced Abinger's curious eyes across the table. But there was more than curiosity in his glance as it swept over her. The same peculiar quality was in it that had troubled her at their last dining together. Only now she did not notice it. If she could have given her thoughts to anything at all but weariness and despair, she might have wondered to see his very real concern at her appearance.
"Why, what have you been doing to yourself?" he said. "You look half dead. Here, drink this wine at once." He poured out a glass of champagne for her, and would eat nothing himself until she had partaken of one of the hors-d'œuvre. And when the soup appeared, he waved hers away and ordered an entrée to be brought at once. The wine flew into Poppy's cheeks and sent a little scarlet to her lips. She felt a warmth stealing into her being that had been sadly absent since the past midnight. Presently she smiled a little wan smile across at him.
"Oh, I'm all right, Luce! Only I didn't sleep much last night ... the heat——"
"We'll get out of this infernal place—" he began.
"Oh, no, no!" she cried violently, then pulled herself together and added more calmly: "I like the place, Luce—and the garden ... is so lovely ... I should hate to go away."
He was curiously amenable.
"Very well, we'll stay if you say so. And I've been thinking over what you asked the other day, Poppy ... we'll change things. You could go out if you want to ... we must talk about it ... I want to talk ..." he halted a little in his speech—"to you."
"I'm not keen about it any longer, Luce. I don't want to know people, after all. I think I'll shut myself up and work for ten hours every day. I mean to write. I will write a wonderful book. Surely people who work hard are happy in a way, aren't they, Luce?" Her voice and her eyes were wistful. "One would never want anything else—after a time—but to go on writing wonderful stories of life, would one?"
He smiled grimly. She thought he was going to hurl a barb at her, but he only said with the same unusual gentleness: