“I’d hate to bet on your meaning it,” said Blanche, a bit more softly.
“Don’t do it, you couldn’t get any odds,” he answered.
He chucked her under the chin and she slapped his hand.
“What nervous ha-ands you’ve got,” she said.
“Come on, act as though you didn’t like it,” he retorted.
“That’s the best thing I do,” she replied.
They continued the bantering, with the occasional interruption of a fox-trot, until his “turn” came on, when he left her with an acquaintance of his—a harmless, hero-worshiping chorus man in a dark suit, whose ruddy, regular-featured face had a look that was perilously near to a pout. Then Campbell appeared in white duck trousers, a dark blue coat, black shoes, and a panama-straw hat, and did clog-dances, and sang in a hard tenor voice, at the head of a bare-legged chorus dressed in very short boyish trousers of red, and indigo low-necked vests, and gaudy caps slanting on their heads. He was a nimble dancer and had a powerful voice, and could have risen to a point near the head of his profession, if laziness and undue dissipation had not held him down. When his act had finished and he had cleaned the make-up from his face, he returned to the table and remained there with Blanche until 2 A. M. After they left the place they entered a cab and he said: “What d’you say to coming up to my joint for a while—I’m harmless, girlie, I won’t make you cry on mother’s shoulder.”
“You are, and you’re going to stay that way,” she answered. “C’mon now, tell James to drive over to Ninth Avenue, old dear.”
He made a grimace and did as she requested. He’d get her yet, no fear, but there was no need for hurrying. It was always a fatal move to expostulate with a woman at such a juncture. Again, she wasn’t important enough to him for any come-downs.
In the taxicab, he hugged and kissed her, and though she made little resistance, an alertness contended against the liquor-fumes in her head and counseled her to “look out.” As they stood in the hallway of her building he became a trifle bolder, and she was passive for a while and then stopped him. It wasn’t easy to hold out against him, and she had barely been able to check the rising dizziness within her, but she simply couldn’t let him win her as lightly as this. She had not drunk sufficiently to reach a gigglingly helpless mood, although everything did seem to be jovially unimportant, and a dislike of him rose within her. He was too confident, he was. She’d teach him a lesson, she would, in spite of all of his physical appeal and his pleasant nerviness.