"What did you think I did it for?"
"I suppose, because you wanted me to go."
"Stupid! I did it because I wanted you to stay." She looked into his eyes and the light went out of her own; among its paint and powder her audacity lay dead. It was as if she saw on his face the shadow of Lucia Harden, and knew that her hour had come.
She met it laughing. "Good-night, Ricky-ticky."
As he took her hand he muttered something about being "fearfully sorry."
"Sorry?" Poppy conjured up a poor flickering ghost of her inimitable wink. "The champagne was bad, dear. Don't you worry."
When he had left her, she flung herself face downwards on the divan. "Oh, dicky, will you hold your horrid little tongue?" But as she sobbed aloud, the canary, symbol of invincible Propriety, rocked on his perch and shook over her his piercing and exultant song.
Rickman was sorry for her, but the sight and touch of her were hateful to him. He took her advice however. He had had good luck with some articles, and he called on Pilkington the next afternoon and paid him his thirty pounds with the interest. Dicky was in a good humour and inclined to be communicative. He congratulated him on his present berth, and informed him that Rickman's was "going it." The old man had just raised four thousand on the Harden library, the only security that he, Dicky, would accept.
"I suppose," said Rickman simply, "you'd no idea of its value when you let him buy it?"
Dicky stared through his eye-glass with his blue eyes immense and clear.