Bertram let several expressions chase themselves over his face before he blurted out:
“What’s the matter with me?”
“Not a great deal. Has she so refused you as to make you conscious of sin?”
“It wasn’t a cold turn-down. I’d like it better if it was. I’d have something to go on. It’s—it’s like trying to bite into a billiard ball. I—you know what I mean.”
“You mean that she holds herself above you—that she feels superior to you?”
Bertram arrested all motion on that word, sat with the menu card, which he had been twirling, immovable between his hands.
“Yes. If you want to jolt it to me good and hard that way. I guess that is what it does mean.”
“I suppose then that the crisis—last night—came about from your little passage with the 184 Chinese waiter? It happened while you were out on the balcony didn’t it?”
Bertram stared and glowed.
“Say, you’re a wonder. You reach out and get things before they come to you at all. That’s just what did happen.”