"No—no—no, Bruce, you don't understand—my love—"
"I do understand. That I have you now to love and adore, to marry—"
The door opened then, quite abruptly. It was Robert Visigoth. He had a straw hat in one hand and an alligator traveling bag in the other. The latter he set down rather abruptly.
So instantaneous was their springing apart and so ready the mind to believe what the heart denied, that it was almost conceivable that he had not seen. There was not even a pause, and through the perfunctory greetings of these two men of strangest relation, Lilly found herself somehow back at her desk, little prickles out all over her body and particularly against her face, like the bite of sleet, something like this running behind her lips:
"Please, God, don't let him tell. He promised! Please! God, I'll never give in again. Bruce—my darling—don't let him tell you. He promised he wouldn't. Don't tell him, Robert. Bruce, don't let him. Please, God—don't let him."
After a while, burning with the fever in her blood, she plunged, for the sedative of it, into the work before her. The first of a stack of reports on her desk was from the Adelphi Theater, Akron, Ohio.
"Three Melodious Sisters." 12 minutes. Well received. Wardrobe worn.
"Whistling Bicyclers." 14 minutes. Skillful. Comedy weak.
"Please, God—don't let him—"
"Shenck and Bent." 9 minutes. 3 laughs.