"If you do—if you go—h-how can you c-care for me as you say you do?—when I ask you not to—when I cannot endure—to—"
She turned swiftly and stared across at Alixe; and Alixe, unsteady in the flushed brilliancy of her youthful beauty, half rose in her seat and stared back.
Instinctively the young girl's hand tightened on Selwyn's arm: "She—she is beautiful!" she faltered; but he turned and led her from the table, following Austin, his sister, and Lansing; and she clung to him almost convulsively when he halted on the edge of the lawn.
"I must go back," he whispered—"dearest—dearest—I must."
"T-to Gerald? Or—her?"
But he only muttered: "They don't know what they're doing. Let me go, Eileen"—gently detaching her fingers, which left her hands lying in both of his.
She said, looking up at him: "If you go—if you go—whatever time you return—no matter what hour—knock at my door. Do you promise? I shall be awake. Do you promise?"
"Yes," he said with a trace of impatience—the only hint of his anger at the prospect of the duty before him.
So she went away with Nina and Austin and Boots; and Selwyn turned back, sauntering quietly toward the table where already the occupants had apparently forgotten him and the episode in the riotous gaiety increasing with the accession of half a dozen more men.
When Selwyn approached, Neergard saw him first, stared at him, and snickered; but he greeted everybody with smiling composure, nodding to those he knew—a trifle more formally to Mrs. Ruthven—and, coolly pulling up a chair, seated himself beside Gerald.