"All right!" Angelica answered, with a trace of sulkiness.
"You can go if you like," Polly went on. "I won’t need you any more to-night. I think, Angelica, you’d better have your dinner in your room. Mr. Geraldine might not like a stranger at the table the first evening he’s home."
"All right!" said Angelica again, turning obediently to the door.
But she did not attempt to conceal a most provoking smile—to show Polly that she knew the cause of all this.
She went trailing back to her own room in the yellow negligée, and shut herself in, happy enough to be alone and unobserved. After all, what did it matter if she couldn’t come down to dinner, couldn’t see him at all that evening? She could think about him; she could recall his face and his voice; rejoice again in that unaccountable thrill.
She leaned back in her chair, her arms clasped behind her head, a strange and divinely stupid smile on her lips. Just at the threshold of love she was lingering, in that little moment before there is desire or pain, when love is without substance, without thought, a dim ecstasy, with no more motive, no more basis for its joy, than the dream of an opium-smoker.
"Gawd!" she said to herself, with a grin. "I guess I’m hit this time, all right!"
II
There was a knock at the door. She went leisurely to open it, with the expectation of seeing her dinner served on a tray; but it was Eddie, the loyal Eddie, come to fetch her. He was rather pale and quite unsmiling.
"If you’ll get dressed," he said. "We’re waiting for you to come to dinner."