"There, Cornelia, you're making innuendos about Mr. Fontaine again," said Janet. "It isn't fair. If you mean to take me into your confidence at all, you might do it all the way through."
"Not another word will you get out of me now, Araminta," replied Cornelia, with one of the queer laughs she gave whenever she blocked people's wishes.
However, fearing to weaken the hold she had upon Janet, she added:
"I'm too famished to talk. Here we are, landing at last. Come, we'll get a nice lunch. I know you're dying to talk about the irresistible Claude. I promise to tell you Lothario's whole history over our cups of tea."
Janet begged to be taken to the Y.W.C.A. Cafeteria, whose good food, self-service and picturesque quarters she had heard Cornelia extol. When they reached the restaurant, they saw a very long line of waiting customers.
"This will never do," said Cornelia, disgustedly. And, quite unwilling to sacrifice comfort in the cause of self-service, she dragged the reluctant Janet to a French pastry restaurant on Fifth Avenue.
"I do like a waiter and a table cloth," said Cornelia, as she contentedly resigned herself to these dubious luxuries. "And I don't like to scramble for my napkin and my glass of ice water."
"What a strange thing for you to say," said Janet, puzzled. "It sounds as though, in spite of your advanced views, you might at heart be thoroughly in love with conventional ways."
"Don't put such ideas into your head, silly!" said Cornelia, giving a high-pitched, self-conscious, stagy laugh, with which she shut off further personal questions.
During lunch, Cornelia contrived to say curiously little about Claude Fontaine, Janet learning hardly anything she did not already know. Claude was heir to the great Fontaine jewelry establishment. He was a social swell. He was very handsome. And he was trying equally hard to dabble in modern paintings and not to dabble in modern amours.