For a second Labotte hesitated.
Then he rose, crossed to a table and returned with a box of matches.
“Thank you,” said Miss Crail. “Now you can go.”
Labotte drew himself up.
“I ’af nod the use to be commanded,” he said. “I am a gennelman, an’——”
“Don’t be silly,” said Susan. “Because it suited me to dance with you, that doesn’t make you a gentleman. And now, if you take my advice, you’ll run away and play—while there is time. Otherwise, I may be tempted to put you where you belong.”
The macaroni appeared to have lost the power of speech.
His world was rocking before him.
A woman—a fury, of course—had had the hideous presumption to turn him down. His advances had been rejected: his condescension had been actually flung in his face: he had been offered gross, gratuitous insult. The dove he had deigned to nourish had turned serpent. The female he had demeaned himself to favour had turned and rent him—him, Labotte, knight and sportsman. . . .
The indecency of the affair made his brain reel.