She turned toward the door, stopped short, came back, and made her adieux, then started again toward the door, not noticing Lansing.
"With your permission," said Boots at her shoulder in a very low voice.
She looked up, surprised, her eyes still wet. Then comprehending the compliment of his attendance, acknowledged it with a faint smile.
"Good-night," he said to Nina. Then he took Rosamund down to her brougham with a silent formality that touched her present sentimental mood.
She leaned from her carriage-window, looking at him where he stood, hat in hand, in the thickly falling snow.
"Please—without ceremony, Mr. Lansing." And, as he covered himself, "May I not drop you at your destination?"
"Thank you"—in refusal.
"I thank you for being nice to me. . . . Please believe there is often less malice than perversity in me. I—I have a heart, Mr. Lansing—such as it is. And often those I torment most I care for most. It was so with Alixe. Good-bye."
Boots's salute was admirably formal; then he went on through the thickening snow, swung vigorously across the Avenue to the Park-wall, and, turning south, continued on parallel to it under the naked trees.
It must have been thick weather on the river and along the docks, for the deep fog-horns sounded persistently over the city, and the haunted warning of the sirens filled the leaden sky lowering through the white veil descending in flakes that melted where they fell.