CHAPTER VIII
THE GAMBLING-ROOM
They confronted each other blankly. To Nan’s confusion was added her embarrassment at her personal appearance. Her hat was wet, and the limp shoulders of her khaki jacket and the front of her silk blouse showed the wilting effect of the rain. In one hand she clutched wet riding-gloves. Her cheeks, either from the cold rain or mental stress, fairly burned, and her eyes, which had seemed when he encountered her, fired with some resolve, changed to an expression almost of dismay.
This was hardly for more than an instant. Then her lips tightened, her eyes dropped, and she took a step to one side to avoid de Spain and enter the gambling-room. He stepped in front of her. She looked up, furious. “What do you mean?” she exclaimed with indignation. “Let me pass.”
The sound of her voice restored his self-possession. He made no move to get out of her way, indeed he rather pointedly continued to obstruct 102 her. “You’ve made a mistake, I think,” he said evenly.
“I have not,” she replied with resentment. “Let me pass.”
“I think you have. You don’t know where you are going,” he persisted, his eyes bent uncompromisingly on hers.
She showed increasing irritation at his attempt to exculpate her. “I know perfectly well where I am going,” she retorted with heat.
“Then you know,” he returned steadily, “that you’ve no business to enter such a place.”