Now she hoped to be even more obscure and unconsidered than she had been then, when a little attention was meat and drink, and her name in the paper was a sensation. She knew that publicity, like love, flees whoso pursueth and pursues who flees it, but she prayed that the rule would be proved by an exception to-night, and that she might sneak out as anonymously as she had sneaked in.
Nicky Easton was a more immediate problem. He was groping for her hands. When he found them she was glad that she had her gloves on. They were chaperoned, too, as it were, by their heavy wraps. She was fairly lost in her furs and he in a burly overcoat, so that when in a kind of frenzy he thrust one cumbrous arm about her the insulation was complete. He might as well have been embracing the cab she was in.
But the insolence of the intention enraged her, and she struggled against him as a she-bear might rebuff a too familiar bruin––buffeted his arms away and muttered:
“You imbecile! Do you want me to knock on the glass and tell the driver to let me out?”
“Nein doch!”
“Then let me alone or I will.”
Nicky sighed abysmally and sank back. He said nothing at all to her, and she said the same to him while long strips of Baltimorean marble stoops went by. They turned into Charles Street and climbed past its statue-haunted gardens and on out to the north.
They were almost at Druid Hill Park before Mamise realized that she was wasting her time and her trip for nothing. She spoke angrily:
“You said you wanted to see me. I’m here.”