"Yes, I am; this is the time and the place!" And he rose with decision and walked straight to the kitchen, where a stony-faced individual sat amid the culinary ruins, a statue of despair.
"What I want you to do," said Seabury, "is to fix up a salad and some of the cold duck, and attend to the champagne. Meanwhile I think I'll go downstairs; I have an engagement to kill a man."
However, a moment later he thought better of it; she was standing by the mirror—his own mirror—touching her eyes with her lace handkerchief and patting her hair with the prettiest, whitest hands.
"Kill him? Never: I'll canonize him!" muttered Seabury, enchanted. Behind him he heard the clink of glass and china, the pleasant sound of ice. She heard it, too, and turned.
"Of all the audacity!" she said in a low voice, looking at him under her level brows. But there was something in her eyes that gave him courage—and in his that gave her courage.... Besides, they were dreadfully hungry.
"You refuse to tell me?"
"I do," she said. "If you have not wit enough to find out my name without betraying me to your sister you do not deserve to know my name—or me."
It was nearly two o'clock, they had risen, and the gay little flowery table remained between them; the salad and duck were all gone. But the froth purred in their frail glasses, breaking musically in the candle-lit silence.