“Will you be serious?”
“In a moment. For the present I’m so overjoyed at seeing you, that I’ve forgotten what I came for. Oh, yes—Phil, I’m hopelessly compromised and you’ve done it. Don’t laugh and don’t alarm yourself. You’re doing both at the same time—but I really am—seriously compromised. There’s a story going around that you and I——”
“Yes, I’ve heard it,” he said grimly.
“What interest people can possibly discover in the mishaps of a belated platonic couple in a snowstorm is more than I can fathom. Of course, if there had been anything for them to talk about, I’d have come off scot-free. As it is I’m pilloried in the market place as a warning to budding innocence! Imagine it! Me! I’m everything that’s naughty, from Eve to Guinevere. It would be quite sad, if it wasn’t so amusing. Weren’t we the very presentment of amatory felicity? Can’t you see us now, swathed in our fur coats, sitting like two bundled mummies upon each side of that monstrosity they called a stove, ‘The Parlor Heater,’ that was the name, from Higgins and Harlow, Phila., Pa., done in nickel at the top. Can’t you see us sitting upright on those dreadful hair-cloth chairs, silent and so miserable? That, my dear Philip, was the seductive hour in which I fell from grace. Touching picture, isn’t it?”
Gallatin refused to smile.
“Who told this story, Nina?”
“The chauffeur probably. I discharged him the next day.”
“Of course—that was it. But it’s such a silly yarn. Who will believe it——?”
She threw up her hands in mock despair.