She moved gracefully across the room to a great carved chair near one of the windows. Lawrence drew up another chair and sat down. For a second or two neither of them spoke; then the girl bent forward a little, her chin resting on one hand.
"Well," she questioned, "tell me what you thought?"
The flush had deepened in his face, and his muscular, well-shaped fingers were lacing and interlacing, an unconscious key to the perturbation of his mind. Now that he had seen her again, his folly at having doubted her seemed more utterly absurd and idiotic than ever. He hated desperately to tell her the truth, yet he knew he must. The sooner it was over the better.
"I was a fool!" he said brusquely. "I thought you had been making sport of me. I thought you had made up that whole story for a lark. I realized long before your letter came that such a thing was impossible; but at the dance I was simply stunned. I had just come from the house on Forty-eighth Street, where they told me you had never been there. Your friend, Miss Barton, said she had not seen you in months, and, after what you——"
The girl started slightly. "Of course!" she murmured. "I forgot all about Sally. But surely Mrs. Weston must have——"
"She was away. I didn't see her. The maid said you weren't there, and certainly hadn't been there overnight. Miss Barton knew nothing whatever about you. It looked as if the earth had opened and swallowed you up, so you can imagine my feelings when I caught sight of you at the dance. When I left you the night before, you hadn't a friend in the city but this stenographer, or a cent——"
"You forget the ten dollars," she murmured demurely, her long lashes sweeping her cheeks as she played with a jeweled chain hanging from her neck.
"That didn't count," he retorted.
"Not in the way you mean, perhaps," she supplemented. "And so you went from Mrs. Weston's to the dance, and saw me there?"
"N-not directly. It was too early, and I was troubled and worried to know what had become of you. I drove around a little, and walked through the square——"