After the food was finished it was to be expected that Lucille would go to the piano, and play some more, and that the men would sit about smoking on the davenport and the taborets, and that every one would be pleasantly quiet. But Lucille did not. Instead, she and Francis retired to the back room, leaving Marjorie and the others to amuse each other, and talk for what seemed to Marjorie's strained nerves an eternity of time. It was Francis who had called Lucille, moreover, and not Lucille who had summoned Francis, as could have been expected.
Finally the other men rose to go. Francis came out of the inner room and went with them. Before he went he stopped to say to Marjorie:
"I told you I wanted to talk things over with you. I'll be back in a half-hour. You seem to be so popular that the only way to see you alone is to get you in a motor-car, so if you aren't too tired to drive around with me to-night, to a place where I have to go, I'll bring you home safely. . . . I didn't mean to speak so sharply to you, Marjorie, over the telephone. Please forgive me."
"Certainly," said Marjorie coldly and tremulously. It could be seen that she did not forgive him in the least.
He went downstairs with the others, laughing with Burke, who had a dozen army reminiscences to exchange with him, and bidding as small a good-by as decency permitted to Logan. Marjorie heard him dash up again, and then run down, as if he had left something outside the door and forgotten it. Lucille came over to her and began to fuss at her about changing her frock for a heavier one, and taking enough wraps.
"Why, it's only a short drive," Marjorie expostulated. "And I'm not sure that I want to go, anyway. I don't think there's anything more to be said than we have said."
Francis, with that disconcerting swiftness which he possessed, had come back as she spoke.
He came close to her, and spoke softly.
"You used to like the boy you married, Marjorie. For his sake won't you do this one thing? Give me a hearing—one more hearing."
Lucille had come back again with a big loose coat, and she was wrapping it round her friend with a finality that meant more struggle than poor tired Marjorie was capable of making. After all, another half-hour of discussion would not matter. The end would be the same. She went down with them to the big car that stood outside, and even managed to say something flippant about its looking like a traveling house, it was so big. Francis established her in the front seat, by him, tucked a rug around her, for the night was sharp for May, and drove to Fifth Avenue, then uptown.