“You must! I want to learn everything. I am tired of being just a girl. Isn’t there anything else in life but to sit here with you and father, and his friends? Are our hearts always going to beat on, one-two, one-two, like the ticking of a clock? You say you love me, but you are as cold as ice!”
She drew close and looked up at him queerly. Her eyes now were not the eyes he knew so well, calm and grave, or smiling; they were deeper, he thought; deeper, more beautiful, but—they seemed to fascinate him; he felt himself grow dizzy; the blood leaped in his veins and pounded in his heart. He put his arms about her and drew her close—close. She smiled now, with a smile he had never seen on her face before. It made her look older, wiser. How beautiful she was. She was a woman, no longer a girl, and all her beauty was his. His!
“You say you love me,” she whispered quickly, with a note in her voice new to him, but strangely thrilling. “If you want to keep my love you must make me mad for you. Are you made of flesh and blood? Come! Kiss me!”
He kissed her. Kissed her with a depth of passion such as he had never dreamed of, and for a moment she returned his kiss, then relaxed and lay half fainting in his arms, then releasing herself with a low laugh she stepped away from him.
“There! That’s different. I do love you, John, more than I thought I did.”
“Lola!” He tried to take her in his arms again, but she laughingly avoided him, going around the table, her eyes still challenging him to follow.
“You are a silly boy, John, but I like you very much to-night.” She bent over the table, tauntingly, alluring. “You are not quite as cold as you look, John. Wouldn’t it be funny if I had to be afraid of you?”
He followed her; she laughed again, and started to run to the door, and as she did so a small, flat leather box fell out of the fancy shopping bag she still held in her hand, and which had come unfastened, as she had drawn herself away from him.
As John stopped and stooped to pick the little box up, her whole manner changed so suddenly that he was startled. The love, the mischief, and the deeper feeling that had done so much to intoxicate him, was wiped out, and in its place there was a look of fear and anger, and as she spoke her voice was harsh and cold.
“Give that to me.”