"Miss Dounay!" exclaimed the minister sharply.
But beside herself with chagrin and disappointment, the woman ran on with growing scorn, as she asked sneeringly: "Do you not see that all this gaping adoration is unreal? That a touch would overthrow you? A single false step, and the newspapers which have made you for the sake of a front-page holiday would have another holiday, and a bigger one, in tearing you down?"
Hampstead gritted his teeth, but he could not have stopped her.
"Can you imagine what would be the biggest news story that could break to-morrow morning in Oakland?" she persisted. "It would be the fall of John Hampstead. Can't you see it?" she laughed derisively. "Headlines a foot tall? Can't you hear the newsboys calling? Can't you see the 'Sisters' whispering? Can't you see the gray heads bobbing? The pulpit of All People's declared vacant! John Hampstead a by-word and worse—a joke! Can't you see it?"
Not unnaturally, the minister was angry.
"No," he said sharply, "and you will never see it, for I shall not take that single false step of which you speak."
"Oh, you really would not need to take it," sneered the actress, with a sinister note in her voice, "a man in your position need not fall. He may only seem to fall."
It seemed to John that the woman was actually menacing him.
"François!" he called sharply.
The chauffeur's heels came clicking back from around the turn, and in a silence, which upon Miss Dounay's part might be described as fuming, and upon the minister's as aggressively dignified, the couple were driven back to the hotel, arriving in time for Rollie Burbeck to emerge from the telephone booth, to observe the car, and to avoid its occupants.