"Then go back to New York and tell it to Harford Willis. If it's anything I want to hear, he will write me."
"Harford Willis! What's he—!" The significance of her words seemed to come to Bel all at once. "You don't mean to say you're going—! You can't be meaning to—!" With a long stride Bel swung in front of her again at the head of the stairs to the street. "At least, tell me what you mean to do."
"I mean to go to Reno, as soon as you let me pass."
Bellamy's eyes narrowed as if in physical pain. He threw out a hand of inarticulate protest, and let it fall in despair. Subduing a strong desire to bolt for it, Lucinda began to descend at a pace not inconsistent with dignity. At the same time, sensitiveness to the situation, the feeling that they had been playing a scene of intimate domestic drama for the edification of an entire hotel, made her aware that the young man whose interest had first manifested near the elevators had followed and was now standing at the head of the steps, over across from Bellamy.
Pushing through the door, she breathed thankfully the stinging winter air. The canopy lamps made the sidewalk bright and discovered her bellboy shivering by the open door of a taxicab. As she moved toward it she heard the revolving door behind her buffet the air, then Bel's voice crying out her name.
Abandoning all pretense, Lucinda ran. The bellboy caught her arm to help her into the cab and chattered: "W-where t-t-to, m'm?" She was prevented from answering by Bel, who elbowed the boy aside and caught her by the shoulders.
"No!" he cried violently. "No, you shan't—d'you hear?—you shan't go without listening to me!"
By some means, she did not know quite how, Lucinda broke out of his hands and stepped back.
"Let me alone!" she insisted. "Let me——"
Somebody came between them. Startled, she identified the strange young man of the foyer.