"I won't tell any more lies to Lorry."
He looked at her, and saw her flushed, mutinous, tears standing in her eyes.
"But, dearest—"
She cut him off, her voice suddenly breaking:
"I can't do it. I didn't know it was going to be so dreadful. But I can't look at Lorry and tell her any more lies. I wont. It makes me sick. It's asking too much, Boyé. There's something hateful about it."
Her underlip quivered, drew in like a child's. With a shaking hand she began fumbling about her belt for her handkerchief.
"Sometimes I feel as if I was doing wrong," she faltered. "I love you,
I've told you so—but—but—Lorry's not like anybody else—anyway to me.
And to keep on telling her what isn't true makes me feel—like—like—a
yellow dog!"
The last words came on a breaking sob, and the handkerchief went up to her face. Mayer was frightened. A quick glance round the plaza showed him no one was in sight, and he threw him arm about her and drew the weeping head down to his shoulder. Though the green paradise plume was in the way and his fear of passersby acute, he was still sufficiently master of himself to soothe with words of beguiling sweetness.
While he did it, his free hand holding the paradise plume out of his face, his eye nervously ranging the prospect, his mind ran over ways to meet the difficulty. By the time Chrystie had conquered her tears, and, with a creaking of tight-drawn silks, was sitting upright again, he had hit on a solution and was ready to broach it.
"Well, then, we'll rule out any more lies as you call them. You won't have to say another word to Lorry. We can go on just as we'd planned."