His effort at honesty, at discovering the mystery of profound disturbing needs, had been vain. Gathering Anette in his arms Lee kissed her. She rested there for a moment; then, with her hands against his chest, pushed him away. “I can't, now,” she told him; “somehow it's all spoiled. It seemed as though you were studying me disapprovingly. I'm not just bad, you know.”
“I don't think you are bad at all,” he replied irritably; “you brought that into it. Why, in the name of heaven, should I?”
“Fanny doesn't like me,” she said at a tangent.
“Who put that in your head?”
“Fanny. She's hardly civil.”
“If you mean she's jealous, she isn't.”
“You hardly need to add that. Of course, I realize Fanny Randon couldn't be jealous of me. Good Lord, no! Why should she be? No one would give me a thought.”
Anette, wholly irrational, was furious. Damn women, anyway! It was impossible to get along with them, since they hadn't a grain of reason. He was superior to her temper, indifferent to it, because he was indifferent to her. Suddenly the charm she had had for him was gone, the seductiveness dissolved, leaving only Anette, a fairly good-looking girl he had known for a great while. His warm response to her was dead; whatever she had aroused and satisfied, or left in suspense, no longer contented him. The memory of his interest in her, the thought he had expended, was now a cause of surprise, incomprehensible. Lee wanted to return to the club house and Fanny.
There was an obscure indication of Alice's hands raised in the rearrangement of her hair. George Willard half turned, facing the rear of the car. “I can't see much,” he said, “but it is evident that you two have been fighting. Why don't you live in peace and happiness? The trouble's all with Lee, too, you don't have to tell me that, Anette; he is too cursed cantankerous; and it would serve him right if you'd come up here with us.”
Anette opened the door and an icy draft swept about their knees. “Not yet,” Willard begged; “we won't be missed.”