"You're quite mad, Steve! You've scarcely time to dress."
"Oh, I must run!" she cried, turned to Cleland, audaciously, offered her lips, almost defiantly.
"We're quite safe, Jim, if we can do this so innocently." She laughed. "You adorable boy! Oh, Jim, you're mine now, and I'll never let you go away again!"
As he went out, he met Grismer, face to face. The blood leaped hotly in his cheeks; Grismer's golden eyes opened in astonishment:
"Cleland! By all the gods!" he said, offering his hand.
Cleland took it, looked into Grismer's handsome face:
"How are you, Grismer?" he said pleasantly. And passed on out of the front door.
CHAPTER XVIII
Cleland dined by himself in the lively, crowded café of the Hotel Rochambeau—a sombre, taciturn young man, still upset by his encounter with Grismer, still brooding impotent resentment against what Stephanie had done. Yet, in spite of this the thrill of seeing her again persisted, filling him with subdued excitement.
He realized that the pretty, engaging college girl he had left three years ago had developed into an amazingly lovely being with a delicately vigorous and decisive beauty of her own, quite unexpected by him. But there was absolutely no shyness, no awkwardness, no self-consciousness in her undisguised affection for him; the years had neither altered nor subdued her innocent acceptance of their relationship, nor made her less frank, less confident, or less certain of it and of the happy security it meant for both.