"Betty is making no end of a row," Max said, looking up from his game,
"because the old lady upstairs insists on chloroform liniment. Betty
says the smell makes her ill."
"And she can inhale Russian cigarettes," Anne said enviously, "and
gasolene fumes, without turning a hair. I call a revoke, Dal; you
trumped spades on the second round."
Dal flung over three tricks with very bad grace, and Anne counted them
with maddening deliberation.
"Game and rubber," she said. "Watch Dal, Max; he will cheat in the score
if he can. Kit, don't have another clam while I am in this house. I have
eaten so many lately my waist rises and falls with the tide."
"You have a stunning color, Kit," Lollie said. "You are really quite
superb. Who made that gown?"
"Where have you been hiding, du kleine?" Max whispered, under cover of
showing me the evening paper, with a photograph of the house and a cross
at the cellar window where we had tried to escape. "If one day in the
house with you, Kit, puts me in this condition, what will a month do?"
From beyond the curtain of a sort of alcove, lighted with a red-shaded
lamp, came a hum of conversation, Bella's cool, even tones, and a heavy
masculine voice. They were laughing; I could feel my chin go up. He was
not even hiding his shame.
"Max," I asked, while the others clamored for him and the game, "has any
one been up through the house since dinner? Any of the men?"
He looked at me curiously.
"Only Harbison," he replied promptly. "Jim has been eating his heart
out in the den every since dinner; Dal played the Sonata Appasionata
backward on the pianola--he wanted to put through one of Anne's lingerie
waists, on a wager that it would play a tune; I played craps with
Lollie, and Flannigan has been washing dishes. Why?"
Well, that was conclusive, anyhow. I had had a faint hope that it might
have been a joke, although it had borne all the evidences of sincerity,
certainly. But it was past doubting now; he had lain in wait for me at
the landing, and had kissed me, ME, when he thought I was Jimmy's wife.
Oh, I must have been very light, very contemptible, if that was what he
thought of me!
I went into the library and got a book, but it was impossible to read,
with Jimmy lying on the couch giving vent to something between a sigh
and a groan every few minutes. About eleven the cards stopped, and Bella
said she would read palms. She began with Mr. Harbison, because she
declared he had a wonderful hand, full of possibilities; she said he
should have been a great inventor or a playwright, and that his attitude
to women was one of homage, respect, almost reverence. He had the
courage to look at me, and if a glance could have killed he would have
withered away.