"Grace," he said, gently, "for twenty-nine days I've been the unhappiest man in all New York. For five, the unhappiest in the entire world!"
"Will you kindly release my hand?" she asked. No sooner had the words left her lips than she realized they were piffle. Then she began to laugh. It was the first official acknowledgment that no social barriers divided them.
"Suppose," she asked, with a humorously intended demureness, "that I wished to use my handkerchief?"
H. R. with his disengaged hand took his own out of his pocket and held it to her nose.
"Blow!" he said, tenderly.
"I don't want to," she retorted and tried to pull away her hand.
He replaced his handkerchief in his pocket.
"All over but the mailing-list," he said to her. "Sit down here; by me!"
Something within her stirred to revolt. Unfortunately, he did not release her hand, but led her to the historic divan—part of the suite for which Mr. Goodchild had paid eighteen thousand five hundred dollars in the Sunday supplement. Marie Antoinette had been seated in that very place when de Rohan brought the famous diamond necklace to show her. (Same issue; third column, fourth page.)
"I think that for sheer, unadulterated impudence—" she began, without any anger, because she was too busy trying to decide what she must do to him to put an end to a situation that had become intolerable—at least in its present shape.