She passed out of the lift with Rotherby, and he unlocked a door that led into a tiny hall.
“Take off your cloak!” he said; then, as she fumbled, unfastened it himself and slipped it from her shoulders.
She felt his eyes upon her again, and was stabbed, as a dreamer is sometimes stabbed, by a curious feeling of insecurity. Then he had turned away, and was taking off his own hat and coat.
He closed the door by which they had entered and she heard the snap of a patent lock. “We don’t want anyone else in,” he said.
She paused. “But isn’t it public? I thought you said it was a hotel.”
He opened another door, and switched on a light that showed her a luxurious red-curtained apartment, with a polished table spread with refreshments of all kinds, and an electric stove that burned with a hot glow before a deep settee.
“This isn’t public,” he said. “It belongs to me.”
“Belongs to you!” She looked at him with eyes that were beginning to see that which her numbed brain till then had failed to grasp. “What do you mean?”
He made an airy gesture. “I mean that I have paid for it, that’s all. See what a disappointment you would have given me if you had refused to come in to supper!”
She stood staring at him. “I—don’t understand. You said—you did say—it was a public place?”