“I’ll try,” she breathed.
“You know I wouldn’t hurt you for the world—you know that, don’t you?”
She nodded, in silence.
“Tell me!”
“Yes,” she said, half audibly, meeting his eyes bravely.
“When may I see you again?” he ventured easily, rising to his feet.
“I—I don’t know—perhaps never. It depends so much on you.”
“There! That’s better—of course, it depends on me. We’ll be good friends—you shall see. I keep my promises, you know. There—are you happier?”
She did not answer. Before he could speak, his quick ear and hers caught the sound of the front door opening, and her mother’s step on the stairs. Instinctively she flew to her room to freshen her tear-stained face and rearrange her hair. In less time than it took Mrs. Ford to reach her door Sue was beside him, looking remarkably calm and neat under the circumstances, he thought, for her age. The next moment he bent ceremoniously over her hand as Mrs. Ford rushed into the room, bursting with good news over the little Jones girl, and overjoyed to find him still there. Her delight being of short duration, since before she was fully aware of it, he had graciously taken his leave, allaying her fears with so sincere a promise to call soon again, that she followed him out into the hall, and sent him three au revoirs down the stairs, as the last vestige of him passed Fortune and her dusty harvest. Even then she flew to the window, her mouth as small as a button, pursed in expectation, but he did not look up. He was thirsty and wanted a drink, and with that foremost in his mind, set out briskly for the Hotel Brunswick, where he met Dicky Riggles, who was drunk, and his bulldog, who was sober—and so on down to Rose Van Cortlandt, who had been waiting for him in the café of the old Martin, where she half forgot her bad temper in conversing in her worst French to a patient waiter, who spoke it fluently.
And where do you suppose they dined? Close by, on the corner, at Solari’s, that fine old house with its blinds always closed and its door always open, and where Rose became even cheerful over the best green-turtle soup in the whole world and as mellow and convincing a bottle of Moulin à Vent as was ever born on the sunny flanks of Burgundy—a pure and noble wine, discreetly served by an aged waiter. They were the only persons in the spotlessly clean old dining-room, as old-fashioned as the bar down-stairs, whose marble statues of “The Three Graces” always seemed to be thinking of the past.