She still held him off with the gentle mockery of her smile. “But haven’t I?” she rejoined. “You advised me to leave the yacht, and I’m leaving it.”
He saw then, with a pang of self-reproach, that she meant neither to explain nor to defend herself; that by his miserable silence he had forfeited all chance of helping her, and that the decisive hour was past.
She had risen, and stood before him in a kind of clouded majesty, like some deposed princess moving tranquilly to exile.
“Lily!” he exclaimed, with a note of despairing appeal; but—“Oh, not now,” she gently admonished him; and then, in all the sweetness of her recovered composure: “Since I must find shelter somewhere, and since you’re so kindly here to help me——”
He gathered himself up at the challenge. “You will do as I tell you? There’s but one thing, then; you must go straight to your cousins, the Stepneys.”
“Oh—” broke from her with a movement of instinctive resistance; but he insisted: “Come—it’s late, and you must appear to have gone there directly.”
He had drawn her hand into his arm, but she held him back with a last gesture of protest. “I can’t—I can’t—not that—you don’t know Gwen: you mustn’t ask me!”
“I MUST ask you—you must obey me,” he persisted, though infected at heart by her own fear.
Her voice sank to a whisper: “And if she refuses?”—but, “Oh, trust me—trust me!” he could only insist in return; and yielding to his touch, she let him lead her back in silence to the edge of the square.
In the cab they continued to remain silent through the brief drive which carried them to the illuminated portals of the Stepneys’ hotel. Here he left her outside, in the darkness of the raised hood, while his name was sent up to Stepney, and he paced the showy hall, awaiting the latter’s descent. Ten minutes later the two men passed out together between the gold-laced custodians of the threshold; but in the vestibule Stepney drew up with a last flare of reluctance.