“And he is so particular how one looks,” Miss Rose whispered back to the familiar; and her tip-tilted feature sought deeper protection in the furs.
At length, when well off the paved streets, the mad rush of the brutes cooled down to a swinging trot—ten miles an hour; Browne’s tense arms relaxed a trifle; and he drew a long, deep breath—whether of relief, or anxiety, no listener could have guessed. But he kept his eyes still rooted to that off-horse’s right ear as though destiny herself sat upon its tip.
Then, for the first time, he spoke; and he spoke with unpunctuated rapidity, in a hard, mechanical tone, as though he were a bad model of Edison’s latest triumph, and some tyro hand was grinding at the cylinder.
“Miss Rose,” he began, “we are old friends—never so old; but I can never sufficiently regret—last night!”
He felt, rather than saw, the muff come sharply down and the face turn full to him; regardless now of the biting wind.
“No! don’t interrupt me,” he went on, straight at the off-horse’s right ear. “I know your goodness of heart; know how it pained you; but you could have done nothing else but—refuse me!”
Miss Rose Wood’s mouth opened quickly; but a providential gutter jolted her nearly from the seat; and the wind drove her first word back into her throat like a sob.
The inexorable machine beside her ground on relentless.
“Yes, I understand what you would say: that you refused me firmly and finally because I—deserved it!” Had Andy Browne’s soul really been the tin-foil of the phonograph, it could not have shown more utter disregard of moral responsibility. “You knew I was under the influence of wine; that I would never have dared 192 to address you had I been myself! I repeat, I deserve my—decisive rejection! It was proper and just in you to say ‘No!’”
Woman’s will conquered for one brief second. Spite of wind and spite of him, Miss Wood began: