“Didn’t you say I was trying?”
“I think—” said Violet. “Please stop the cab! I’ll take a bus home.”
Very well, he was not going to argue with her. He stopped the cab, and they both got out. He put Violet on a bus, and then he walked uptown along the Drive. There were lights in almost every window, now, and across the river other lights shone out—from homes.
“She was crying,” Leonard mused.
Was he to be held responsible for that? Hardly. He had been on the point of offering her all he had, but he had discovered in time that she was after bigger game. Life in a love nest—with Aunt Jean and her million, not with him! It was funny, in a way.
And in another way it was not so very funny. He knew all about human nature, but for a long time he had thought that Violet was different. Well, she wasn’t. She had reproached him for being disagreeable. All right! He reproached her, in his heart, for something a good deal worse than that.
It hurt—he would admit it. It hurt like the devil!
IV
Leonard did not telephone home to Marian. After a solitary dinner in a restaurant, he caught the nine o’clock train. He walked up from the station at a leisurely pace. He was defying Marian.
“Just let her start something!” he said to himself.