“Ah, no! It's last night. And I can explain.”
“No!” she cried. “You shall not make me out so mean and vindictive. I don't care for last night, nor for anything that happened.” This was not true, but it seemed so to her at the moment; she thought that she really no longer resented his association with Miss Anderson and his separation from herself in all that had taken place.
“Then what is it?”
“I can't tell you. But everything is over between us—that's all.”
“But yesterday—and all these days past—you seemed—”
“It's unfair of you to insist—it's ungenerous, ungentlemanly.”
That word, which from a woman's tongue always strikes a man like a blow in the face, silenced Mavering. He set his lips and bowed, and they parted. She turned upon her way, and he kept the path which she had been going.
It was not the hour when the piazzas were very full, and she slipped into the dim hotel corridor undetected, or at least undetained. She flung into her room, and confronted her mother.
Mrs. Pasmer was there looking into a trunk that had overflowed from her own chamber. “What is the matter?” she said to her daughter's excited face.
“Mr. Mavering—”