She looked a little hurt. "You don't like it?" she said.
"Do you?" I snapped back.
After a time I had recourse to the old argument that it didn't look well; that it wasn't fair to Julian. But she had been expecting this.
"My dear Walter," she answered, "you must try to be more consistent. In Paris you told me that I must cease to regulate my life by Julian. You were quite right. This place pleases me, and I don't intend to go to a hotel, which I hate, or to take a house, which is a bother, in order to soothe Julian's feelings. I have begun to lead my life to suit myself."
The worst of it was, I could think of no answer.
A few evenings afterward we dined at the same house. Anne arrived with a scarf on her head, under the escort of a maid. She had come in a trolley car. Nobody's business but her own, perhaps, if she would have allowed it to remain so, but when she got up to go, and other people were talking of their motors' being late, Anne had to say: "Mine is never late; it goes past the corner every minute."
I could almost hear a sigh, "Poor angel!" go round the room.
The next thing that happened was that Julian sent for me. He was in what we used to call in the nursery "a state."
"What's this I hear about Anne's being hard up?" he said. "Living in a nasty flat, and going out to dinner in the cars?" And he wouldn't listen to an explanation. "She must take more; she must be made to take more."
I had one of my most unfortunate inspirations. I thought I saw an opportunity for Julian to make an impression.