"Damn it all, Sara," he said shrilly, "she—-she turned me down."
He seemed incapable of comprehension.
She was unmoved. Her eyes narrowed, but that was the only sign of emotion.
"I—I can't believe—" he began querulously. "Oh, what's the use? She won't have me. 'Gad! I'm trembling like a leaf. Where's Watson? Have him get me something to drink. Never mind! I'll get it from the sideboard. I'm—I'm damned!"
He dropped heavily into a chair at the end of the table and looked at her with glazed eyes. As she stared back at him she had the curious feeling that he had shrunk perceptibly, that his clothes hung rather limply on him. His face seemed to have lost all of its smart symmetry; there was a looseness about the mouth and chin that had never been there before. The saucy, arrogant moustache sloped dejectedly.
"I fancy you must have gone about it very badly," she said, pursing her lips.
"Badly?" he gasped. "Why—why, good heavens, Sara, I actually pleaded with her," he went on, quite pathetically. "All but got down on my knees to her. Damn me, if I can understand myself doing it either. I must have lost my head completely. Begged like a love-sick school-boy! And she kept on saying no—no—no! And I, like a blithering ass, kept on telling her I couldn't live without her, that I'd make her happy, that she didn't know what she was saying, and—But, good Lord, she kept on saying no! Nothing but no! Do—do you think she meant to say no? Could it have been hysteria? She said it so often, over and over again, that it might have been hysteria. I never thought of that. I—"
"No, Leslie, it wasn't hysteria, you may be sure of that," she said deliberately. "She meant it, old fellow."
He sagged deeper in the chair.
"I—I can't get it through my head," he muttered.