A waiter had brought a fur cloak and now held it for her. As she adjusted it about her shoulders she glanced around and saw Merriam.
For a moment she looked straight at him. Merriam would have sworn that her colour heightened ever so little and then paled. She smiled a mechanical little smile, bowed slightly, spoke to her companion, and threaded her way quickly among tables to an exit.
"I beg your pardon!"
Merriam started and looked up--to find the black-eyed, white-bosomed woman from the other table standing beside him. He was conscious of a faint fragrance, which a more sophisticated person would have recognised as that of an extremely expensive perfume, widely advertised under the name of a famous opera singer.
He rose mechanically, dropping his napkin.
"No, no," she smiled. "Won't you sit down--and let me sit down a moment, too?"
She took the chair opposite him.
"My name is Alicia Wayward," she said. There was a kind of deliberate sweetness in her tone.
John Merriam got back somehow into his chair and looked at her, but did not reply. His eyes saw the face of Mollie June, peeping out of her furs, as on that last night at Riceville, her changing colour, her mechanical smile, and the hurrying away without giving him a chance to go to her for a single word.
"Won't you tell me your name?" said Alicia, with the barest suggestion in her voice of sharpness in the midst of sweet.