“None specially; but if it’s just a splendid young animal to look at, you want, I daresay it would be safer to import a polar bear from the Zoo.”
Lorraine felt a spot of colour burn in her cheeks, but she only laughed the subject aside, and alluded to it no more before they parted at the theatre door.
Only at a late supper-party that night she was quieter than was her wont; and, contrary to her habit, one of the first to leave. A well-known rising politician, who had been paying her much attention of late, prepared, as usual, to escort her home. She wished he would have stayed behind, but had no sufficient reason for refusing his company. He taxed her with silence as they spun westwards, and she pleaded a headache, wondering a little why all he said, and looked, and did, somehow seemed banal and irritating tonight.
He was so sure of himself, so fashionably blasé, so carelessly clever, so daringly frank, with all the finished air of the modern smart man, basking callously in the assured fact of his own brilliance and superiority. She knew that most women would envy her the attentions of such a one, and that his interest was undoubtedly a great compliment, as such compliments go; but tonight she found herself remembering all the other women who had reigned before her, all those who would presently succeed her, and she was conscious of an impatient disgust of all the shallowness and insincerety of the fashionable, successful man.
“May I come in?” he asked, when they reached the flat, looking rather as if he were conferring a favour than soliciting one.
“No; it is too late. Good-night.”
“Too late!…” he laughed a little, and Lorraine felt her temper rising. “It is not exceptionally late, a little earlier than usual in fact. Why mayn’t I come in?”
“Because I don’t want you,” she said coldly, and she saw him bite his lip in swift vexation.
“I shall certainly not press you,” he retorted, and turned away.
At the window of her drawing-room Lorraine lingered a few moments, gazin with a half-longing expression at the gleam of the lights on the dark flowing river. What was it that gave her that strange sense of heartache tonight? Why had her usual companions bored and irritated her? Why did Alymer Hermon’s fine, boyish, refreshing face come so often to her mind?