“Why, I—why—I’m afraid I can’t—really I can’t, Mr. Lamont,” stammered Sue. “You see, I’ve already promised Mrs. Van Cortlandt.”
“Then arrange it,” he begged softly, taking advantage of these few words alone with her. “Please, won’t you? Say you’ll try. You’ll make me so happy if you will. I’m so terribly lonely.”
“Lonely!” She flushed slightly, and added with a forced little laugh: “But you don’t look lonely, Mr. Lamont.”
“I am, nevertheless. I’m wretchedly lonely,” he declared.
He was on the point of playing his trump-card, but feared he would have to play it too hastily to bring any satisfactory result—liable as they were at any instant to be interrupted. Lamont’s trump-card consisted in confiding to a woman his domestic unhappiness. The trick is not new, by any means; of convincing her of his unhappy marriage; that of all the women in the world his wife least understood him and his sensitive nature; that, although he was too loyal a fellow to say anything that might be misconstrued against her, he felt she (to whom he was speaking) would understand how much he suffered. He was not like other men; he had a heart that needed affection, craved affection. His married life had been a hollow mockery, devoid of that love which he craved, which as a boy he had founded his ideals upon. Cupid had treated him like a tyrant. He had held out everything to him, and given him nothing but an empty, aching heart, a life of loneliness such as few men had known. Where would it all end? Often he omitted this last phrase and ceased speaking until she saw the tears welling to his eyes; then his quick: “Forgive me. Life’s a hard game, isn’t it? There are moments when we all break down—even the bravest of us.”
This seldom, if ever, failed to land them.
He cut this to-night, and contented himself by continuing to persist about his coupé. He would tell Mrs. Van Cortlandt himself, he declared. “It would be all right. I want you to feel the coupé is at your disposal whenever you wish it. There, you see I’m frank—I can’t bear to think of you travelling in those wretched cars.”
“But, Mr. Lamont!” exclaimed Sue, at a loss for a better reply.
“Whenever you wish it—and as often,” he added, and turned graciously to his hostess, satisfied that he had ended his little tête-à-tête at precisely the right moment. Another word, he felt, would have ruined his chances, considering her age.
“Where’s Sam?” he asked. “I’ve been hunting all over for him.”