"Then—then, why not come with me?" he labored over it. "I've a drawing-room on the Lake Shore on the five o'clock. I knew about Felicity; that wasn't why I came back. I came because I thought maybe we could go out—you and I—and look around together."
He knew it was a poor thing of weak words and not what his inarticulate heart would have uttered. Yet he was not prepared for her reception of it.
She laughed up into his face, a hard little, crisp little laugh.
"Why not?" she said. "Why not?"
And when he took her in his arms and kissed her it was not as he had dreamed it would be. Her body was slack, her lips not merely passive but cold against his own. His heart heavy for reasons which he could not name, he set her quickly free.
"I'll be back for you, then, at three," he said. "Will you be ready?"
As casually, it came to him, just as calmly he might have discussed his plan with any man.
"At three," she repeated. "I'll be ready."
He left her, not as happy as when he had sped up the stairs; left her demoralized now. In the interlude before his return she sat motionless, her mind a tumult of doubt.
She too had dreamed what that embrace would be; she had wanted always to be near him, yet she had just shrunk from it.