“But if you have scruples, I’ll be only too glad to swear that I won’t tell. Come, we’ll have a little social puff and chat.”
Dolores tried to be good-natured, even when he gripped her arm and propelled her into one of the small committee rooms. When, however, he took from a gold case a slender, perfumed cigarette, lighted it and essayed to place it between her lips, resentment moved her.
“Really, Mr. Brill, I never have smoked and I don’t care to begin now. I—I must be getting back to my work.”
As she started from the room he lunged across a table and caught her.
“But I am here to show you how. One lifts the terrible thing in the fingers, so——”
His pudgy left arm caught hers. The smaller fingers of his dimpled right hand pressed up her chin. Thumb and forefinger sought to force between her set teeth the lip-wet smoke. When she realized that his foot was trying to push shut the door, an emotion new to Dolores suddenly controlled her.
“I don’t wish to smoke, I tell you. I don’t wish to be shown.”
With the indignant words she beat him upon the face and chest until he fell back gasping.
“Aha, a wild-cat is Nimrod’s latest trophy—a live one, at that!”
Dolores remembered his chuckled comment after she had forced back the door and rushed from the committee room. Down the corridor and around a turn to the study she ran without one backward glance.