She nodded.
"Come to me—at my office, any afternoon, after five." And he added, without lowering his voice: "If you're after a career, don't waste your time on this sort. I can put you in a day where you want."
She rose to take her seat on his right, next to Lindaberry.
"Will you come?" he said, detaining her.
"Why not?" she said, lifting her eyes, with a little affectation of surprise at so simple a question.
During her progress about the table she had kept Lindaberry in mind, with a lurking sense of antagonism, a desire to return to the attack, to punish him further. A certain grace that he had, which appealed to her instinct, the quality of instinctive elegance, only increased her resentment. At the bottom, the intensity of this resentment surprised her—without her being able to analyze it.
He had risen with a bow that was neither exaggerated nor curt. There was undeniable power in his face, boyish and weak as it was in its unrestraint, like a flame spurting fiercely on a trembling wick. He brought to men a little sense of fear—never to women. To-day this intensity seemed clouded, not fully awake as if there were still dinning in his ears the echoes of the night before. The dullest observer, looking on his face, would have seen where he was riding. In his own club (where he was adored) bets were up that he would not last the year.
Presently he leaned toward her and said, protected by the shrieks of laughter that surrounded De Joncy:
"Don't you think you were in the wrong? What right had you to come here?"
She understood that Busby had betrayed her to him and to Harrigan Blood.