Elated by a strange, almost cruel feeling of conquest, he followed her, with a last look back at the studio, at the littered bar, where Bo Lynch was still calling raucously for customers, at the silent intensity of the gamblers, whom he occasionally perceived between the flitting dresses of the dancers. In the middle of the floor Lorraine and Plunkett, stumbling and unsteady, were solemnly waltzing in each other's arms—the specter of the morning forgotten.
He closed the door softly and joined the young actress, who was waiting for him at some distance.
"Can you take me home?" she asked directly. "Mr. Lorraine is in such a condition that I do not wish to go with him."
"Certainly," he said, a feeling of protection replacing the first victorious perception of the fire of jealousy he had awakened in her.
Gunther's automobile was waiting, and they entered it. She did not say a word to him, and he, determined to force her to begin the conversation, waited with a pleased enjoyment until three-quarters of the journey had been accomplished. All at once she turned, and, taking him by the lapels of the coat, brought him toward her as one scolds a child.
"Are you so angry because I didn't see you this afternoon?" she said, smiling.
The feminine defensive instinct of avoiding the issue by ambushing it with subterfuges, is equaled only by that instinct for attack which brushes aside all preliminaries and strikes directly. Beecher, taken off his guard, was a prey to two contrary impulses. Two replies, absolutely opposed and illogically joined, came to his lips. One brutal, still charged with the savageness of the evening, to say:
"Angry? Not at all. Aren't you claiming a little too much?"
And the other, a warm, yielding desire to blurt out frankly:
"Yes, I was angry. I wanted to see you."