"May I?"
"Yes. I like it."
"Do you smoke?"
"No--now and then when I'm troubled."
"Is that often?" he asked lightly.
"Very seldom," she replied, amused; "and the proof is that I never
smoked more than half a dozen cigarettes in all my life."
"Will you try one now?" he asked mischievously.
"I'm not in trouble, am I?"
"I don't know. I am."
"What troubles you, C. Bailey, Junior?" she asked, humorously.
"My disinclination to leave. And it's after eleven."
"If you never get into any more serious trouble than that," she said,
"I shall not worry about you."
"Would you worry if I were in trouble?"
"Naturally."
"Why?"
"Why? Because you are my friend. Why shouldn't I worry?"
"Do you really take our friendship as seriously as that?"
"Don't you?"
He changed countenance, hesitated, flicked the ashes from his
cigarette. Suddenly he looked her straight in the face: "Yes. I do take it seriously," he said in a voice so quietly and
perhaps unnecessarily emphatic that, for a few moments, she found
nothing to say in response.
Then, smilingly: "I am glad you look at it that way. It means that you
will come back some day."
"I will come to-morrow if you'll let me."
Which left her surprised and silent but not at all disquieted.
"Shall I, Athalie?"
"Yes--if you wish."
"Why not?" he said with more unnecessary emphasis and as though
addressing himself, and perhaps others not present. "I see no reason
why I shouldn't if you'll let me. Do you?"
"No."
"May I take you to dinner and to the theatre?"
A quick glow shot through her, leaving a sort of whispering confusion
in her brain which seemed full of distant voices.
"Yes, I'd like to go with you."
"That's fine! And we'll have supper afterward."
She smiled at him through the ringing confusion in her brain.
"Do you mind taking supper with me after the play?"
"No."
"Where then?"
"Anywhere--with you, C. Bailey, Junior."
Things began to seem to her a trifle unreal; she saw him a little
vaguely: vaguely, too, she was conscious that to whatever she said he
was responding with something more subtly vital than mere words.
Faintly within her the instinct stirred to ignore, to repress
something in him--in herself--she was not clear about just what she
ought to repress, or which of them harboured it.