"Why, in heaven's name, are we here, then?" he demanded, just as they were drawn swiftly to the curb, and the cab came to a stop in front of the church.
"You requested my help, did you not?" she replied.
"I certainly did."
The chauffeur, in the meantime, had leaped to the pavement and thrown open the door of the cab.
"You may close the door again, chauffeur, and wait where you are for further orders," Beatrice told him, calmly. And when that was done, she again addressed her companion. "You have called me a 'good fellow' to-night," she said slowly, with quiet distinctness, "and I mean to be one. I have always meant to be one, and to a great extent I think I have succeeded. But I would have to be a much better fellow than I am to go to the extent of marrying a man who does not love me, and who does love another, simply to help him out of a mess in which his own stupidity has involved him. Wouldn't I? Ask yourself the question!"
Duncan shrugged his shoulders and parted his lips to reply, but she went on rapidly:
"That is asking me to go rather farther than I would care to venture, my friend; or you, either, if you should stop to think about it. Your proposition is utterly a selfish one. You must know that. You have thought only of yourself and the mess you are in. You do not consider me at all. You would cheerfully use me as a means of venting your spite—or shall I call it, temper?—against Patricia. For the moment, you are intensely angry at her. Not only that, you feel that you have been out-done, at every point. That she has acted unreasonably, I will not deny. But what a silly thing it would be for you and me to stand together at the altar, and pledge ourselves to each other for life, or until such time as the divorce-courts might intervene, just because of the events of to-day!" She was smiling upon him now, as if he were, indeed, a foolish boy who needed chiding.
Duncan pulled himself together. For the first time since their exit from the opera-house, and for perhaps the first time since the moment when Patricia discovered him in the private office of her father, he was capable of acting and thinking quite naturally.
"Beatrice," he said, "if the sentiments you have just expressed are the same as those you felt before you left the box at the opera-house, would you mind telling me why in the world you have acted as you have done? Why, in the name of all that's phenomenal and strange, are we here?"
She turned her head away from him, and peered through the glass door at the chauffeur, who was striding slowly up and down the pavement outside, and who had taken the opportunity to indulge himself in a smoke.