"It can be put that way," replied she. "And no doubt you honestly see it that way. But I've got to see my own interest and my own right, Freddie. I've learned at last that I mustn't trust to anyone else to look after them for me."
"Are you riding for a fall—Queenie?"
At "Queenie" she smiled faintly. "I'm riding the way I always have," answered she. "It has carried me down. But—it has brought me up again." She looked at him with eyes that appealed, without yielding. "And I'll ride that way to the end—up or down," said she. "I can't help it."
"Then you want to break with me?" he asked—and he began to look dangerous.
"No," replied she. "I want to go on as we are. . . . I'll not be interfering in your social ambitions, in any way. Over here it'll help you to have a mistress who—" she saw her image in the glass, threw him an arch glance—"who isn't altogether unattractive won't it? And if you found you could go higher by marrying some woman of the grand world—why, you'd be free to do it."
He had a way of looking at her that gave her—and himself—the sense of a delirious embrace. He looked at her so, now. He said:
"You take advantage of my being crazy about you—damn you!"
"Heaven knows," laughed she, "I need every advantage I can find."
He touched her—the lightest kind of touch. It carried the sense of embrace in his look still more giddily upward. "Queenie!" he said softly.
She smiled at him through half closed eyes that with a gentle and shy frankness confessed the secret of his attraction for her. There was, however, more of strength than of passion in her face as a whole. Said she: