But in the living-room Horatia remembered and to her horror it was half-past ten. Signalling to Maud, she started to leave the room and was annoyed to find Wentworth following her.
“It’s very early, Miss Grant.”
“I know, but I am just going to work. I work in The Journal office and it’s election night and I meant to get back by ten o’clock. Now it will be eleven.”
He did not show the slightest perturbation at the announcement of her work, but pulled out his watch.
“Not if you let me take you down in my car. Can’t I, please?”
“I’d love it.”
They seemed to fly along the streets and she loved the sureness of his driving. Huddled beside him in her cloak, with the wind in her face, that too was an adventure. The city streets were more crowded than usual and knots of men stood together on the corner, arguing and discussing. At The Journal office, Horatia noted with satisfaction that there was a crowd around the hall, a large enough crowd to prove the importance of The Journal politically, she thought. She and Anthony Wentworth pushed through it up to the door of the office and Wentworth followed her in. The tobacco smoke was thick in the room. It was crowded and unfamiliar, with a man sitting at her desk with his feet on her table and Langley laughing rather uproariously at something. As she came in the conversation halted abruptly. Some of the men knew her but to most of them the slim beautiful girl in evening clothes and the tall, immaculate man beside her seemed a curious apparition. There was an awkward moment. Horatia seemed chiefly conscious of Jim Langley’s eyes suddenly eager, suddenly hostile, suddenly cynical again. It was her companion who broke the silence as he greeted Langley cordially.
“Why, I didn’t know what I was getting into, Langley,” he said. “Is it your paper Miss Grant works on? I brought her down because she was in such a hurry to get here——”
To Horatia her hurry now seemed absurd. What had she hurried for? They didn’t need her. She was simply out of place.
“You told me I could answer the telephones.”