"No—no!" The door was open, the neat little landau-limousine that had brought them was waiting by the kerb-stone. Before Franky knew it, Margot had plucked him down the steps, pulled him into the car, and given the chauffeur the signal. They were in Hanover Square before he recovered his breath.
"Oh come, I say, Kittums! That sort of Sandow business can't be good for you. Why you're in such a thundering hurry to get me away, I'd rather like to know?"
Her heart shook her, but she lied again bravely.
"Didn't you want to hear what the Doctor told me about the 'Purple Dreams' treatment?"
"More than anything in the world. That drug with the freak name! ... Can it do any harm—to you and——"
"Not a scrap!"
She planted a flying kiss between his ear and his collar. He greatly appreciated the attention, though it tickled him horribly.
"Dr. Saxham said it was a frightfully clever, practicable method. Absolutely harmless, and the patient doesn't suffer—not that much!" She measured off an infinitesimal bit of finger-nail and showed him, and went on as he caught the little hand and gratefully mumbled it: "You don't know a thing that happens. You simply go to bye-bye. And—there's always the baby when you wake up!"
"A first-class baby?" His harping maddened her. "A healthy little buffer to send to Eton and represent us in the Regiment, and inherit the title presently when his poor old Pater pops? Just look me in the face like the little sport you are, Margot, and tell me that you're playing square with me. For this—for this is the game of Life!"
He had both her hands. He made her look at him. She met his eager stare with limpid eyes. And all the while that sentence of Saxham's about the pre-natal poisoning of the springs of existence, drummed, drummed at the back of her brain. "What a little beast I am!" she mentally commented, hearing her own voice answering: