"I am not going to take a refusal, Dick. I want to see you. I want you to take the bit in your teeth again. Come to see me to-night. I'll have one of our old spreads in my little dining-room. I'll sing and dance for you and tell you the funniest story you ever heard. I am going to expect you."
There was a genuine warmth of appeal in her face. In all his knowledge of her she had never appeared to such an advantage. After all, her argument was reasonable and rational. A titillating sensation suffused his being. In fancy he saw the little dining-room, which adjoined her boudoir; he saw her at the piano, her white fingers tripping, as in the old days, over the keyboard; he heard her singing one of her gay and reckless songs; he saw her dainty feet tripping through the dance he so much admired.
"You are coming, Dick," she said, confidently, withdrawing her hand and raising her sunshade. "I shall expect you by nine o'clock, sharp. I won't listen to a refusal or excuse. I shall have no other engagement."
He hesitated, but she laughed in his face, her red lips parted in an entrancing smile. He caught a whiff of her favorite perfume, and his hot brain absorbed it like a delicious intoxicant.
"I know you of old, Dick Mostyn. You used to say now and then that you had business that would keep you away, but you never failed to come when you knew positively that I was waiting. I am going to wait to-night, and if I don't make a new man of you I'll confess that I am a failure."
"I really can't promise." He was looking back toward the smoke-clouded city, at the gray dome of the State Capitol. "I may come, and I may not, Marie. I can't tell. If I shouldn't, you must forgive me. It is kind of you to want to help me, and I appreciate it."
"You are coming, Dick; that settles it." She smiled confidently. "Huh! as if I didn't know you! You are the same dear, old chap, ridden to death with silly fancies. Now, I'm going to run back and speak to Mary. I forgot something. She is all right. She won't talk even if she recognized you, which is doubtful, for she is a stranger here."
Turning, he walked back toward the city. Already he was in a different mood; his step was more active; all of his senses were alert; his blood surged through his veins as if propelled by a new force. He saw some vacant lots across the street advertised for sale by a real estate-agent, and found himself calculating on the city's prospective growth in that direction. It might be worth his while to inquire the price, for he had made money in transactions of that sort.
Returning to the bank, he found that the activity of the clerks and typewriters did not jar on him as it had been doing of late. He paused at Saunders's desk and made a cheerful and oddly self-confident inquiry as to the disposition of a certain customer's account, surprising his partner by his altered manner.
In his office, smoking a good cigar, he found a new interest in the letters and documents left there for his consideration. After all, life was a game. Even the early red men had their sport. Modern routine work without diversion was a treadmill, prisonlike existence. Delbridge was the happy medium. The jovial speculator had never heard of such a fine-spun thing as a conscience. What if Irene and Buckton were having their fun; could he not also enjoy himself? If the worst came, surely a man of the world, a stoical thoroughbred, who was willing to give and take a matrimonial joke would appear less ridiculous in the public eye than an overgrown crier over spilt milk. How queer that he had waited for Marie Winship to open his eyes to such a patent fact!