“It's too mad a risk. I was crazy to promise. I won't go!”
She had scarcely spoken her resolution when the soft call of the auto-horn echoed below. She stood irresolute for a moment, and the call was repeated in plaintive, appealing notes.
She tried to hold fast to her resolutions, but the impulse to open the window and look out was resistless. She turned the old-fashioned brass knob, swung her windows wide on their hinges and leaned out.
His keen eyes were watching. He lifted his cap and waved. She answered with the flutter of her handkerchief—and all resolutions were off.
“Of course, I'll go,” she cried, with a laugh. “It's a glorious day—I may never have such a chance again.”
CHAPTER V. WINGS OF STEEL
She threw on her furs and hurried downstairs. Her surrender was too sudden to realize that she was being driven by a power that obscured reason and crushed her will.
Reason made one more vain cry as she paused at the door below to draw on her gloves.
“You have refused every invitation to see or know the unconventional world into which thousands of women in New York, clear-eyed and unafraid, enter daily. You'd sooner die than pose an hour in Gordon's studio, and on a Sabbath morning you cut your church and go on a day's wild ride with a man you have known but fifteen hours!”