Suddenly Hodder pushed back his chair and got to his feet, overcome by a choking sensation like that of being, asphyxiated by foul gases. He must get out at once, or faint. What he had seen in the man's eyes had aroused in him sheer terror, for it was the image of something in his own soul which had summarily gained supremacy and led him hither, unresisting, to its own abiding-place. In vain he groped to reconstruct the process by which that other spirit—which he would fain have believed his true spirit—had been drugged and deadened in its very flight.
He was aware, as he still stood uncertainly beside the table, of the white-aproned waiter looking at him, and of some one else!—the woman whose eyes had been fastened on him so persistently. She was close beside him, speaking to him.
“Seems to me we've met before.”
He looked at her, at first uncomprehendingly, then with a dawning realization of her identity. Even her name came to him, unexpectedly,—Kate Marcy,—the woman in the flat!
“Ain't you going to invite me to have some supper?” she whispered eagerly, furtively, as one accustomed to be rebuffed, yet bold in spite of it. “They'll throw me out if they think I'm accosting you.”
How was it that, a moment ago, she had appeared to him mysterious, inviting? At this range he could only see the paint on her cheeks, the shadows under her burning eyes, the shabby finery of her gown. Her wonderful bronze hair only made the contrast more pitiful. He acted automatically, drawing out for her the chair opposite his own, and sat down again.
“Say, but I'm hungry!” she exclaimed, pulling off her gloves. She smiled at him, wanly, yet with a brazen coquettishness become habit.
“Hungry!” he repeated idly.
“I guess you'd be, if you'd only had a fried egg and a cup of coffee to-day, and nothing last night.”
He pushed over to her, hastily, with a kind of horror, the plate of sandwiches. She began eating them ravenously; but presently paused, and thrust them back toward him. He shook his head.