Instantaneously, Ferlie turned her back and thrust her foot into the errant shoe. In the doorway she faced him, her cloak over her arm.
"You have never asked that of me before," she said, "and you will never be required to say it again."
Half paralysed he heard the front door bang. In another moment the wave of reaction set in. What in thunder was he thinking of to allow her to go out into Jermyn Street at this hour of the night, alone?
He snatched his hat and followed, gaining on her by the fact that he could take the lift. She was passing under the stone arch leading to the pavement as he crashed back the gates.
"Ferlie!" he called after her, "Wait." But she did not stop nor turn her head at the sound of his footsteps hurrying along behind her. A taxi crawled near with its flag up. He was just too late to prevent her getting into it. With feverish presence of mind he noted the number. Fortune favoured him, for it was caught in a block of cars returning from the theatres, as another car ejected its passenger on the other side of the road.
Cyprian, too fiercely anxious at the moment to see the humour of the situation, gave his penny-novelette directions. The driver awarded him an indifferent glance and held out his hand for earnest money. He was used to minding his own business in his profession.
Once in full pursuit of Ferlie's taxi Cyprian found himself on the verge of unnatural mirth. His third night in England; and he and Ferlie playing hide-and-seek, in and out of the London traffic, like any hardened human satyr and some nymph of the by-streets. And why? What was this intangible, invisible Thing which had suddenly interposed itself between them? A silly whim on her part, an instinct-driven refusal on his and the shadow had assumed these gigantic proportions.
Outside the Carmichaels' town residence, with its Sale-advertising boards and closed blinds, Ferlie alighted.
From the prompt departure of her driver one might divulge that she paid him without examining the fare. On her own front door-step, wrestling with her latch-key, Cyprian reached her.
"Ferlie, don't be a little goose!"