“Here, I say,” he said angrily “none of that! Let’s understand each other once for all. I’m not that kind. Wherever I go you go.”
“I wish you would go back to your club,” she said after a moment without answering his last remark. “That is different, that would mean a lot to you. Oh yes, it would mean a lot, I know it.”
“Just why do you say that?”
“Because such things mean a lot to you.”
“What things?”
“Why, the feeling of being admired and petted after you’ve done something big,” she said, smiling a little. “You’re very much of a boy. Then you need to be with men who wake you up. It’s good for you. I can see that—you need a little play.”
“Well, I’m not going,” he said abruptly and with a sudden gesture of irritation he cut her short and refused to discuss the matter further.
But despite his protestations he longed to do the very thing he had refused. Yet he hesitated. It seemed disloyalty to her. Just why he should feel so he could not quite explain to himself, yet he felt despite all that she had said it would send her further from him than she was now, with the feeling of encompassing loneliness.
It was not until a week after, late in the afternoon, after a renewed urging by De Gollyer that he yielded far enough to glance undecidedly at Inga.
“Come now, Mrs. Dangerfield,” said De Gollyer, “Dan always was an unsociable brute. He ought to drop in, you know, he really ought to. Every one at the club is waiting to see him—can’t understand why he doesn’t come around.”