“For what?”
“Being so rough to that poor man?”
“I’m not. Good night.”
“Good night—darling.” She threw out that last word as a challenge. It had a tender but sibilant sound. It was a mixture of a caress and a scratch. It meant she hadn’t given up her hold on him. He might have defeated her in one little contest, but she would weave new ways to entrap him. She might even manage to make him out a murderer—he had been so many things since embarking on that mercurial truth-telling career—and then she would give him the choice of the altar or the chair.
He started the machine and she watched him disappear, musingly. There was a steely light, too, in her eyes. He was a mutineer and mutineers should, figuratively, be made to walk the plank. Should she put him in jail and then come and weep penitently? At least, it would be thrilling. Certainly anything was better than that cast-off feeling. She felt no better than cast-off clothes. This great big brute of a handsome man, instead of jumping at the chance to elope with one who had everything to offer such a one as he, had just turned around and brought her back home.
Maybe he thought she wasn’t worthy of him. Oh, wasn’t she? Her small breast arose mutinously, while that cast-off sensation kept growing and growing. After rescuing him and saving him, instead of calling her “his beautiful doll” or other pet names, and humming glad songs to her—how they would “row, row, row” on some beautiful river of love—or stroll, stroll, stroll through pathways of perfume and bliss—instead of regaling her with these and other up-to-date expressions, appropriate to the occasion, he had repudiated her, cast her off, deposited her here on the front steps, unceremoniously, carelessly, indifferently.
Her cheeks burned at the affront. It was too humiliating. The little hands closed. The temperamental fingernails bit into the tender palms. At that moment the monocle-man sauntered out of the house and on to the veranda, near where Miss Dolly was standing. She turned to him quickly. Her temperament had about reached the Borgia pitch.
Bob went on down to the village and to the taxi stand near the station where he had promised to leave the machine. The last train had just passed by, after depositing the last of late-comers from the gay metropolis. Most of them looked fagged; a few were mildly “corned.” Bob regarded them absently and then gave a violent start.
“Gee-gee!” he gasped.