"Pudgy-wudgy, can you ever forgive me?" Beatrice cried, burying her head on his shoulder.
"I don't know," Johnson Boller said frigidly, and did not even put an arm around her. "I don't know, Beatrice. You have wounded me more deeply this day than I have ever been wounded in all my life before. I shall try in time to forgive you, but—I do not know."
They were all gone now, all but Anthony and his old friend, Johnson Boller.
It was in fact nearly noon, for with the tension removed Mary had gone into the details of last night; and after a little even Robert Vining had laughed. He at least knew Anthony Fry and he believed Johnson Boller to be one of the most harmless fat men in existence, so that when he had heard it all even Robert fell to chuckling.
And now they were gone with Mary, leaving behind a conviction in Anthony's bosom that Mary was really a very charming young girl; leaving an impression, too, that, could twenty years have been swept from his forty-five, he might even have undertaken to win her away from Robert! This last impression was transitory in the extreme, however; it endured for perhaps forty-five seconds.
Hobart Hitchin was gone; he had vanished somewhere about the middle of the session, leaving Richard's trousers, and for a long time nobody even noticed that he was among the missing. To the best of Johnson Boller's memory, he left just after Richard answered the long distance call and assured his father that all was well.
Beatrice was gone, too. She had left all wreathed in smiles, since the idiot that was her husband could not maintain his chilliness for more than five minutes. In a dusky corner, Johnson and his cyclonic lady had kissed eighteen times, lingeringly, and then she had left him to pack up and follow, while she went personally to the five-thousand-dollar apartment to prepare the things he most liked for luncheon.
And now Johnson Boller had packed the grip, while Anthony lounged, tired out, weak in knees and hands, trembling every now and then and gazing into the blue cigar smoke above him.
"The next time I come to stay with you I'm going to bring a chaperon," Boller mused.