Max acted as Mary's guide during the tableaux of the chase that followed. Now the quarry was darting among the congested traffic of Times Square; now he had clambered over the platform of a Forty-second Street surface-car; now he was running up the steep stairway of the Sixth Avenue "L," and now, the hunters close at his heels, he was dashing along Thirty-fourth Street past the Waldorf, turning down toward the Park Avenue Hotel, and so, at last, was caught at the nearby entrance to the subway.
When the lights flared up at the conclusion of the little drama, Mary sighed as if suddenly plunged from fairyland down to the real world below. And then the sigh changed to a gasp of fright: in the same row, only six seats away, her sister Etta was sitting.
The girl started to rise.
"Vhat's wrong?" asked the astonished Max.
"I must go. Don't come out with me. Wait a minute, and then follow. I'll be at the next corner up street. That's our Etta over there!"
But Max did not seem fully to comprehend the warning. He rose with Mary, and made some stir in doing it, so that, as the pair reached the aisle, Etta's eyes were drawn in the direction of her sister and the man.
Mary, though she hastily turned her head, thought that she saw recognition in this sudden glance. She thought that she saw recognition turn to amazement, and amazement to rebuke. Instantly, there rose before her the reefs of ultimate domestic disaster. With Max in close attendance, she hurried to the door.
Outside she did not speak until they had reached the comparative seclusion of a less frequented street. Then she turned hotly upon the youth, whom she considered the cause of her peril.
"Why was you such a fool?" she demanded. "Didn't you hear me say for you not to come out when I did?"
"I didn't understand you," Max humbly expostulated. "But vhat difference does it make, anyvays?"