He did not answer, only stared at her. His face was aflame with some unusual emotion. It looked like a Christmas card—one of those things—transparencies—which admit a ruddy, steady light in places where you hold them up before a lamp.
“Edred has gone out,” she continued with abrupt impulse, “and I—I’m going out too.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. The pit of a theater, perhaps; he used to take me.”
He was looking at her fixedly, as well he might. Her voice, her face, her attitude were reckless.
“Will you come to a music-hall with me?”
She looked at him. He read her contempt for him; it was steady behind the reckless mask. But he didn’t care. For many months he had been playing for this night.
“Wait. One moment,” she said in a staccato fashion. “I’ll put on my long cloak—that’s all.”
She whisked through the door and was back in a moment, wrapped to her ankles in the garment which Edred had bought for her on that fairy summer evening—the night of the day on which she had left Jethro.
“You are going—like that?” he said musingly, as she hitched up the tail of her gown, and plunging his hand into his pocket.