Surprised, yet half inclined to laugh, he waited a moment. Then:
“You are so delightfully grateful for nothing,” he said. “I wish I really had done you a service.”
She spoke, unsteadily, still looking away from him:
“You don’t understand.... I can’t trust myself now.... I seem to be emotional——” She shook her head and he saw the bobbed hair glimmer red against the sunny window.
As they stood there in the curtained recess, Frank Donnell’s voice rose above the general conversation:
“Isn’t that operator nearly ready in the projection room?”
Mr. Zanger left the room to inquire.
Annan turned and accidentally encountered Mr. Smull’s fixed smile.
Something in the persistent, sanguine gaze of the man annoyed him—as though Mr. Smull had had him under impertinent observation for some time without his knowledge. He turned to Eris:
“I wish you really were under obligations to me,” he said lightly, “—you assume imaginary ones so adorably. Shall we go and see how you and Betsy behave yourselves on the screen?”