"You mean—you dare refuse?"
"You bet I dare refuse. There's no sense to all this. Nobody's going to think the worse of you because you got lost with me—and if you're trying to put anything over, you might as well stop now."
Maria Angelina stopped. It seemed to her that she should die of shame.
Dazedly she stood and looked at him through the darkness out of which a few drops of rain were again falling.
"You just forget it and get a bit of rest," Johnny Byrd advised brusquely. "Hurry in out of the wet. That thing's going to leak again," and he nodded jerkily up at the sky.
He tugged open the door, and stricken as a wounded creature crawling to shelter Maria Angelina bent her head and stumbled across the threshold.
"In you go," he said with a more cheerful air. "Wrap yourself up as warm as you can and I'll follow——"
She was within the doorway when these words came. She turned and saw that he was stooping to enter.
"I shall do quite well, Signor," she found her voice quickly to say. "You need not come in."
"Need not——?" He appeared caught with fresh amazement. "Judas, where do you think I'm going to stay? Out in the rain?"