“Oh, it’s true enough,” replied Joyce, wearily.
“The damned little hell-cat,” said McKay. “I told you to keep clear of women.”
“It was bound to come out. One of you fellows might just as well have been with me in the pub last night.”
“Do you think a man would have given you away like this?” asked McKay, with great scorn.
“I ’ve come to the conclusion that anything’s possible in this infernal world,” said Joyce, bitterly. “I suppose the whole crowd are against me.”
“Well, there is a bit of feeling, certainly,” replied McKay, in an embarrassed tone. “And maybe it won’t be very pleasant for you. They all talk as if they were plaster of Paris saints,—and, dash it all—they made me sick; so I thought I’d come and say I’d stand by you.”
“Thank you, McKay,” said Joyce, touched. “You are a good sort. But I sha’n’t ask you. I am not going on with the tour.”
“I think you’re just as well out of it, to tell you the truth,” said McKay. Then his anger against Annie Stevens broke out again in an unequivocal epithet.
“The little————,” he said.
“I suppose it is horrible in a woman’s eyes,” said Joyce, moving with McKay toward the crowd round the luggage-van. “But I can’t see why she should hate me like this, all of a sudden, and wish to ruin me.”