He laughed—there was boyishness in his laugh, but it was not boisterous. “You terrify me,” he exclaimed. Then, reflectively, “I have an instinct that we shall meet again.”
“Perhaps. Why not? It would be far stranger if we did not than if we did?”
He went with her to a cab and, with polite consideration, left her before she could give her address to the cabman. “I wish he had asked to see me again,” she thought, looking after his tower-like figure as he strode away. “But I suspect it was best not. There are some men whom it is not wise to see too much of, when one is in a certain mood. And I must do my duty.” She made a wry face—an exaggeration, but the instinct to make it was genuine.
CHAPTER XVII.
ASHES.
EMILY’S “adventure” lingered with increasing vagueness for a few days, then vanished under a sudden pressure of work. When she was once more at leisure Marlowe came, and she was surprised by the vividness and persistence with which her stranger returned. She struggled in vain against the comparisons that were forced upon her. Marlowe seemed to her a clever “understudy”—“a natural, born, incurable understudy,” she thought, “and now that I’m experienced enough to be able to discriminate, how can I help seeing it?” She was weary of the tricks and the looks of a man whom she now regarded as a trafficker in stolen bits of other men’s individualities—and his tricks and his looks were all there was left of him for her.
“Some people—two I want you to meet, came with me—that is, at the same time,” he said. “Let’s dine with them at Larue’s to-morrow night.”
“Why not to-night? I’ve an engagement to-morrow night. You did not warn me that you were coming.”
Marlowe looked depressed. “Very well,” he said, “I can arrange it, I think.”
“Are they Americans—these friends of yours?”
There was a strain in his voice as he answered, which did not escape Emily’s supersensitive ears. “No—English,” he said. “Lord Kilboggan and Miss Fenton—the actress. You may have heard of her. She has been making a hit in the play every one over there is talking about and running to see—‘The Morals of the Marchioness.’”