She drew back suddenly as if frightened, and her hand, apparently by accident, coming in contact with her glass, sent it tumbling over the table, drenching the cloth, amid a clatter of cutlery. The maître d'hôtel came running immediately to her rescue, napkin in hand.
"Oh, dear! how awkward I am!" she cried, in great confusion.
"It's nothing—nothing!" Peavey said hastily, reproaching himself for having frightened her by the abruptness of his methods, here in a crowded restaurant.
But when they had gone into the anteroom, he said quickly:
"Miss Baxter, will you come into the salon here, or up-stairs? For a quarter of an hour—a few moments, just a second—I must speak to you. Now—at once—please!"
There was no escape; she resigned herself to following him. But as she entered the green-and-gold desert where intimacy could no longer be avoided, she thought to herself:
"Oh, dear! If I had only knocked it over my dress I could have gone right home!"
In twenty minutes it was all over, and very red, very quiet, he had conducted her to his car and sent her off.
"I'm sorry!" she said, distressed at his pathetic figure.
"Such things can't be helped!" he said, with a closing of the jaws.