“I haven’t seen a show for years,” she sighed.
“This would not interest you. It is a Russian play dealing with social unrest.”
She sighed again.
“I love Russian plays. All the characters die so nicely and you know where you are. In a musical comedy you can never be sure who anybody is.”
Gordon shuddered.
“This is not a play for a young girl,” he said gently.
She was unconvinced.
“If you very much wanted me to come, I could dress in five minutes,” she suggested. “I hardly know what I shall do with myself to-night.”
“Think out to-morrow’s breakfast,” he said bitterly.
Alone, she gave her mind alternately to serious thought and the new gramophone. She did think of Dempsi sometimes, and a little uneasily. Not that she had loved that strange progeny of Michael Dempsi and Marie Stezzaganni. Dempsi came into her life as an earthquake intrudes upon the domesticity of a Californian farmer. He shifted the angle of things and had been a great disturbance. She never really remembered Dempsi, except that he was very slight and very wiry and very voluble. She remembered that he had thrown himself at her feet, had threatened to shoot her, had told her he adored her and was ready to forsake his career in the church. Finally, on a hot February morning (she remembered that the roses were thick in the big garden) he had flung his worldly possessions at her feet, taken an intense and tearful farewell, and had dashed madly into the bush, never to return.