“Ah don’t give a darn!” she cried. “There!”
“You’ve got to go!” he said, but weakly. He couldn’t make her.... He stood there by the telephone, white with rage, trying to think.... But nothing came to his brain except two horribly distressing pictures; he saw Anson and his wife and the other guests waiting, polite but astonished and resentful.... And he saw Rosaleen, wild with anxiety, looking out of a window for him.
“There’s a taxi here, sir!” said a voice, and he saw the parlourmaid in the doorway, frankly interested at this curious spectacle of Miss Caroline in evening dress and Mr. Landry in his shirt sleeves, evidently quarreling.
“Yes, it’s for me!” he said, briefly.
Without another glance at Caroline he ran into his room, hurried on his waistcoat and dress coat, thrust on his overcoat, snatched up hat and stick and rushed out.
Rage burned in him. He didn’t think of Rosaleen as the taxi sped along; he thought of Caroline, with hate, with triumph.
“Let her go to the devil!” he said. “I won’t be bullied!”
II
It was a miserable place over a bakery on Third Avenue, a squalid evil-smelling neighbourhood, with the Elevated trains thundering past. This tall man in evening dress descending from a taxi aroused profound interest; one bright little boy said it was movies. He entered the narrow hallway from which the stairs ascended, steep as a ladder, and after striking a match, saw four name plates beneath four bells. Cohen—Moriarity—Connelly—O’Dea.
As he hesitated before them, Rosaleen herself came hurrying down the steep stairs.