"To what?"
"To Mrs. Emerson's pick-me-up."
"Why didn't you decline?" Cameron asked.
"Decline! How the devil could I decline—when she held me on the telephone! Damn the telephone, anyway."
"It's the old game!" laughed Cameron. "A man is helpless when a woman gets him there. He would dine with his cook, or take the laundress to the theatre, if she asked him over the telephone."
But to himself he was thinking:
"Mrs. Emerson knows of that scene on the piazza and wants to have the most talked-of man in the Club at her table to-night. She is long for the main chance."