Beecher denied the charge with indignation.
"If you wanted to, you could have come back to me—yes, you could."
"But you had deserted me—I was furious."
The conversation continued ten minutes on these purely conventional lines and ended with a promise to drop in that afternoon for tea.
He had hardly ended when Mrs. Fontaine called up with an invitation to her box, for Mme. Fornez's début in Carmen the following week.
Then he called up Miss Rivers, not because he particularly wished to talk with her, for he had determined on her decapitation, so to speak, but in order to appease somewhat the desire he had to telephone some one else. In conversing over the telephone, he felt a revival of interest and promised to try to drop in for a call that afternoon.
He rose, looking down at the telephone in a dissatisfied way, and, turning his back, went in search of his hat.
"She'll expect me to telephone, of course," he thought; "besides, what excuse could I give? I'm not going to play into her game—not by a long shot. I know the kind—entirely too much brain-work to suit me. Oh, yes, she'd like to annex me—because I've been attentive to Emma Fornez—sure; but when it comes down to business. Mr. Charles Lorraine has a hundred thousand a year and I have thirty. She knows that." He laughed disdainfully and repeated, "You bet she knows that—well, so do I."
He returned to the sitting-room and selected a cane, glancing out of the corner of his eye at the accursed telephone.
"I won't," he said, taking three steps toward it and then turning abruptly away.