Fifteen minutes later I had reached Riverside Drive, and was being shown into the luxurious apartment of Miss Boadicia Tevandale.
She was an orphan and an heiress, only child of Tevandale the big corporation lawyer, himself an author, whose Tevandale on Torts had almost as big a circulation as my Haunted Taxicab. Socially she moved in a more exalted sphere than I, but we had met at some of the less exclusive functions, and she had majestically annexed me.
Though her dearest enemy could not have called her “fat,” there was just a suggestion of a suggestion that at some time in the future she might possibly develop what might be described as an adipose approximation. At present she was merely “big.”
I rather resent bigness in a woman. A female’s first duty is to be feminine—to be small, dainty, helpless. I genuinely dislike holding a hand if it is larger than my own, and I can understand the feelings of Wainwright who poisoned his sister-in-law because her thick ankles annoyed him. However, Boadicia had really been very nice to me. It would have been terribly rude on my part to have ignored her overtures of friendship. Consequently we had been seen much together, and had drifted into what the world regarded as a sentimental attachment. With my faculty, then, for entering into such situations, I was sometimes convinced that my feelings for her were those of real warmth. Indeed, once or twice, in moments of great enthusiasm, I almost suspected myself of being mildly in love with her.
She received me radiantly, and she, too, gave me both hands. On the third finger of the left one I noted the sparkle of a new diamond.
“Hello, stranger,” she said, gaily. “Just in time for tea. It seems ages since I’ve seen you. Why haven’t you been near me for a whole fortnight?”
I was going to make the usual excuses, when suddenly that devil of sentiment entered into me. So, trying to give my face a pinched look, I answered in a hollow voice:
“Can you ask that?”
She looked at me in surprise. “Why, Horace, what’s the matter?”