"You kept Lady Parham waiting."
"What does that matter?" said Kitty, with an angry laugh.
"And you did Cliffe too much honor," said Ashe. "It's the men who should stand on the steps—not the women!"
Kitty sat erect. "What do you mean?" she said, in a low, menacing voice.
"Just what I say," was the laughing reply.
Kitty threw herself back in her corner, and could not be induced to open her lips or look at her companion till they reached home.
On the landing, however, outside her bedroom, she turned and said: "Don't, please, say impertinent things to me again!" And drawn up to her full height, the most childish and obstinate of tragedy queens, she swept into her room.
Ashe went into his dressing-room. And almost immediately afterwards he heard the key turn in the lock which separated his room from Kitty's.
For the first time since their marriage! He threw himself on his bed, and passed some sleepless hours. Then fatigue had its way. When he awoke, there was a gray dawn in the room, and he was conscious of something pressing against his bed. Half asleep, he raised himself and saw Kitty, in a long white dressing-gown, sitting curled up on the floor, or rather on a pillow, her head resting on the edge of the bed. In a glass opposite he saw the languid grace of her slight form and the cloud of her hair.
"Kitty"—he tried to shake himself into full consciousness—"do go to bed!"