“I shall go to his rooms,” Bellamy declared. “I must be quick, too, for Lassen is free—they will know that he has failed.”
“Come back to me, David,” she begged, and he kissed her fingers and hurried out.
CHAPTER XXX
THE CONTEST FOR THE PAPERS
Laverick, sitting with Zoe at dinner, caught his companion looking around the restaurant with an expression in her face which he did not wholly understand.
“Something is the matter with you this evening, Zoe,” he said anxiously. “Tell me what it is. You don’t like this place, perhaps?”
“Of course I do.”
“It is your dinner, then, or me?” he persisted. “Come, out with it. Haven’t we promised to tell each other the truth always?”
The pink color came slowly into her cheeks. Her eyes, raised for a moment to his, were almost reproachful.
“You know very well that it is not anything to do with you,” she whispered. “You are too kind to me all the time. Only,” she went on, a little hesitatingly, “don’t you realize—can’t you see how differently most of the girls here are dressed? I don’t mind so much for myself—but you—you have so many friends. You keep on seeing people whom you know. I am afraid they will think that I ought not to be here.”
He looked at her in surprise, mingled, perhaps, with compunction. For the first time he appreciated the actual shabbiness of her clothes. Everything about her was so neat—pathetically neat, as it seemed to him in one illuminating moment of realization. The white linen collar, notwithstanding its frayed edges, was spotlessly clean. The black bow was carefully tied to conceal its worn parts. Her gloves had been stitched a good many times. Her gown, although it was tidy, was old-fashioned and had distinctly seen its best days. He suddenly recognized the effort—the almost despairing effort—which her toilette had cost her.