Loder bowed and moved to the front of the box, nodding to Kaine as he passed.
“It's only for an hour,” he explained to Lillian. “I have an appointment for eleven.” He turned and bowed to the third occupant of the box—a remarkably young and well-dressed girl with wide-awake eyes and a retrousse nose.
“Only an hour! Oh, how unkind! How should I punish him, Lennie?” Lillian looked round at Kaine with a lingering, caressing glance.
He bent towards her in quick response and answered in a whisper.
She laughed and replied in an equally low tone.
Loder, to whom both remarks had been inaudible dropped into the vacant seat beside Mary Esseltyn. He had the unsettled feeling that things were not falling out exactly as he had calculated.
“What is the play like?” he hazarded as he looked towards his companion. At all times social trivialities bored him; to-night they were intolerable. He had come to fight, but all at once it seemed that there was no opponent. Lillian's attitude disturbed him; her careless graciousness, her evident ignoring of him for Kaine, might mean nothing—but also it might mean much.
So he speculated as he put his question and spurred his attention towards the girl's answer; but with the speculation came the resolve to hold his own—to meet his enemy upon whatever ground she chose to appropriate.
The girl looked at him with interest. She, too, had heard of his triumph.
“It is a good play,” she responded. “I like it better than the book. You've read the book, of course?”