"Because I want to come," she explained wheedlingly, with her head on one side.
Her eyes were dark and tired after her overnight excitement; she had exhausted herself with talking; and for a moment Eric forgot to be irritated and only saw her as a child whom it would be ungracious to disappoint. Then he remembered one phase of a rambling story in which her love of getting her own way had caused her cavalier of the day to wait in his car from midnight until six because she had forgotten to leave a message that she had already gone home. In the story Eric could not remember any apology from Barbara. Triumphs came so quickly and easily that she expected everything and valued nothing; a man was sufficiently rewarded by being allowed to fall in love with her.…
"I'm afraid rehearsals aren't open to the public," he told her, brusquely enough to dismiss the appeal, he hoped, but not so brusquely as to hurt her.
She looked at him with the glint of defiance which he had seen once before; then she turned to Manders.
"Please, I want to come to the rehearsal," she begged. "It's your theatre, Mr. Manders."
"It's my play," Eric interrupted.
She turned her head long enough to say:
"I was asking Mr. Manders."
"But it happens that I also——"
Manders intervened with a clucking noise of the tongue.