“Take it away. I don’t like it. Let my hand go. What’s the matter with you? I thought I could trust you.”
He said humbly: “You can—certainly you can.”
“I am tired—tired—tired!”
Under his breath he said: “Put your head on my shoulder, Letty, darling.”
And she turned on him nearly as violently as she had on Poniotowsky, and burst into tears, crouching almost in the corner of the motor, away from him, both her hands upon her breast.
“Oh, can’t you see how you bother me? Can’t you see I want to rest and be all alone? You are like them all—like them all. Can’t I rest anywhere?”
The very words she used were those he had thought of when he saw her dance at the theater, and his heart broke within him.
“You can,” he stammered, “rest right here. God knows I want you to rest more than anything. I won’t touch you or breathe again or do anything you don’t want me to.”
She covered her face with her hands and sat so without speaking to him. The light in her motor shone over her like a kindly star, as, wrapped in her filmy things she lay, a white rose blown into a sheltered nook. After a little she wiped her eyes and said more naturally:
“You look perfectly dreadfully, boy! What have you been doing with yourself?”