"Sure, Mike."
CHAPTER IX
BEATRICE UP STAGE
If you vision Clay as a man of battles and violent deaths you don't see
him as he saw himself. He was a peaceful citizen from the law-abiding
West. It was not until he had been flung into the whirlpool of New
York that violent and melodramatic mishaps befell this innocent. The
Wild East had trapped him into weird adventure foreign to his nature.
This was the version of himself that he conceived to be true and the one he tried to interpret to Bee Whitford when he emerged from the hospital after two days of seclusion and presented himself before her.
It was characteristic of Beatrice that when she looked at his battered face she asked no questions and made no exclamations. After the first startled glance one might have thought from her expression that he habitually wore one black eye, one swollen lip, one cauliflower ear, and a strip of gauze across his check.
The dark-lashed eyes lifted from him to take on a business-like directness. She rang for the man.
"Have the runabout brought round at once, Stevens. I'll drive myself," she gave orders.
With the light ease that looked silken strong she swept the car into the Park. Neither she nor Clay talked. Both of them knew that an explanation of his appearance was due her and in the meantime neither cared to fence with small talk. He watched without appearing to do so the slender girl in white at the wheel. Her motions delighted him. There was a very winning charm in the softly curving contours of her face, in that flowerlike and precious quality in her personality which lay back of her boyish comradeship.
She drew up to look at some pond lilies, and they talked about them for a moment, after which her direct eyes questioned him frankly.