"I don't mean to," she told him. "Knowing what I know—it's impossible."
"You will go to the Plaza?"
"Yes," she replied: "I've made up my mind to that."
"You have a cab waiting, of course. May I call it for you?"
"My own car," she said; "the call check is with my wraps. But," she smiled, "I shall be glad to give it to you, to hand to the porter, if you'll be so good."
He had longed to be asked to accompany her; and at the same time prayed to be spared that trial. Already he had ventured too perilously close to the brink of open avowal of his heart's desire. And that way—well he knew it!—humiliation lay, and opaque despair. Better to live on in the melancholy company of a hopeless heart than in the wretchedness of one rejected and despised. And who—and what—was he, that she should look upon him with more than the transient favour of pity or of gratitude for a service rendered?
But, since she, wise in her day and generation, did not ask him, suddenly he was glad. The tension of his emotion eased. He even found grace to grin amiably.
"To do Bayard out of that honour!" he said cheerfully. "You couldn't invent a service to gratify me more hugely."
She smiled in sympathy.
"But he will be expecting to see you home?"