He had tried to make mischief between them—so he had! And then there was that scene in the George at Wordingham, which Lothian had forgotten until now.
"What a cock-sparrow Beelzebub the lad really is," he said in his mind. "And yet I liked him well enough. Even now he's not important enough to dislike. Rita likes him. She often talks of him. He took her out to dinner—yes, so he did—to some appalling little place in Wardour Street. She was speaking of it yesterday. He's written to her from Milan and Rome, too. She wanted to show me the letters and she was cross because I wasn't interested. She tried to pique me and I wouldn't be! What was it she said, oh, 'he's such nice curly hair.'"
He gazed into the empty fireplace before which he was sitting in a huge chair of green leather. The remembered words had struck some chords of memory. He frowned and puzzled over it in his drowsy numbed state, and then it came to him suddenly. Of course! The barmaid at Wordingham, Molly what's-her-name whom all the local bloods were after, had said just the same thing about Ingworth.
Little fools! They were all alike, fluffy little duffers. . . .
He looked up at the clock. It was twenty minutes to one. He had to meet Rita at the library as the hour struck.
He started. The door leading into the outside world shut with a clang. His chains fell into their place once more upon the limbs of his body and soul.
He called a waiter, gulped down another peg, and got into a cab for the Podley Institute.
The pleasant numbness had gone from him now. Once more he was upon the rack. What he saw with his mental vision was as the wild phantasmagoria of a dream . . . a dark room in which a magic lantern is being worked, and fantastic, unexpected pictures flit across the screen. Pictures as disconnected as a pack of cards.
Rita was waiting upon the steps of the Institute.
She wore a simple coat and skirt of dark brown tweed with a green line in it. Her face was pale. Her eyes were without sparkle—she also was exhausted by pleasure, come to the end of the Arabian Nights.