McClintock, coming into the room just then, tip-toed out again and closed the door softly behind him, thus proving himself to be a gentleman of singular tact and discretion.
Chapter Six
An understanding with Lolita which contained certain qualifying clauses was one of the net results of the Adventure of the Lost Dirigible. Jimmy filed a number of demurrers, but they were over-ruled as soon as they were entered on the docket. He had been foolish enough to imagine on the celebrated morning after the night before that a perceptible scent of orange blossoms clogged the circumambient air, but this belief was soon dissipated by the young lady herself.
“I can’t get married, Jimmy,” she said earnestly, “until I find out about my career.”
“What’s that got to with it?”
“Why, just—why, everything. I was reading an article only the other day by Mary Garden in which she said that marriage cramped the career of a woman on the stage. She said that husbands were a handicap—that they held you back with the tail end of the procession and kept you from getting on. She said——”
Jimmy broke in with a scornful laugh.
“I suppose she mentioned Mrs. Fiske and Laurette Taylor and Ethel Barrymore and Blanche Bates and all the other selling platers who’ve been left at the post because they were foolish enough to enter the matrimonial stakes,” he scoffed. “It’s really too bad about ’em. It looked once as if they had a chance.”
Her mouth stiffened at this and she tossed her head with a little gesture that spelled stubborn defiance.