"No."
"Well, then——?"
He pulled off his gloves and took a card and fountain pen from his pocket. Elsie watched him helplessly as he wrote, chilled in spite of herself by a return of the old dread. What, was she not able to hold Anthony certainly, even now? She tried to look around her, fortifying her spirit with all the prosaic evidences of their united life. After all, Masterson knew "Tony"; he knew nothing of the man Anthony was.
She was able to meet her visitor's glance with her usual calm, when he put the message he had written into her hand.
"Tell him to come," he pressed. "Have you forgotten he and I were friends? And I'll always be grateful to you for loving Holly. Did you know I had lost Holly?"
She paled, the baby face rising before her.
"Dead? No. I'm the one who is dead, to borrow a bit of slang."
His laugh was bitter as quassia; he turned his head toward the sound of the automobile horn that summoned him.
"A dead one!" he repeated. "I have to go, Mrs. Adriance. But send Tony over, to-night."