"You've treated me like a dog lately—a yellow dog!" he mourned. "What good did it do to go to your house and be treated like a yellow dog?"
Nan's faculties were beginning to rally after the first panic. Her heart was still thumping violently, but her eyes were bright, and her fighting courage was flowing back. For the first time his obvious condition registered on her brain.
"He's drunk!" she thought.
This discovery at first induced in her another, small panic. Then her courage boldly took it as a point of attack. The man was drunk and dangerous; very well, let us make him more drunk and less dangerous. That was a desperate enough expedient, but at least it was definite. She crossed deliberately to the other easy chair, and sat down.
"Well, let's sit down," she agreed. "No!" more decidedly, "you sit there, on the other side. It's more cozy," she continued, at just the right moment to get her effect on his instinct of good manners. "Now, I will have that sherry. No, don't bother; it is next my hand. You must drink with me. Let me pour it for you—with my own hands—aren't you flattered?"
She smiled across at him. This sudden reversion to an easy every-day plane had brought Sansome's first mood again to the surface. In this atmosphere of orderly tête-à-tête he was again the society man. Nan breathed freer. He murmured something inane and conventional about Hebe.
"Meaning you're a little tin god?" she chaffed.
He said something still more involved, to the effect that her presence would make a god out of the most unworthy mortal. It was all vapid, unreal, elaborate, artificial.
"If I can only keep him at this!" thought she desperately.
She had drunk her glass of sherry because she felt she needed it. Now she poured another, and without comment, refilled Sansome's whiskey glass.