"What has happened? Where are you going in those clothes?" demanded
Kitty.
"I am running away--for an hour or so."
"But you must not! The risks--after all the trouble we've had to help
you!"
"I shall be perfectly safe, for you are going with me. Aren't you
my guardian angel? Well, rather! The two of us--people, lights, shop
windows! Perfectly splendiferous! Honestly, now, where's the harm?" He
approached her rapidly as he spoke, and before the spell of him could be
shaken off Kitty found her hands imprisoned in his. "Please! I've been
so damnably bored. The two of us in the streets, among the crowds!
No one will dare touch us. Can't you see? And then--I say, this is
ripping!--we'll have dinner together here. I will play for you on the
old Amati. Please!"
The fire of him communicated to the combustibles in Kitty's soul. A
wild, reckless irony besieged her. This adventure would be exactly what
she needed; it would sweep clear the fog separating one side of her
brain from the other. For it was plain enough that part of her brain
refused to cooperate with the other. A break in the trend of thought:
she might succeed in getting hold of the puzzle if she could drop it
absolutely for a little while and then pick it up again.
She had not gone home. She had not notified Bernini. She had checked her
luggage in the station parcel room and come directly here. For what? To
let the sense of luxury overcome the hidden repugnance of the idea of
marrying Cutty, divorcing him, and living on his money. To put herself
in the way of visible temptation. What fretted her so, what was wearing
her down to the point of fatigue, was the patent imbecility of her
reluctance. There would have been some sense of it if Cutty had proposed
a real marriage. All she had to do was mumble a few words, sign her name
to a document, live out West for a few months, and be in comfortable
circumstances all the rest of her life. And she doddered!
She would run the streets with Johnny Two-Hawks, return, and dine with
him. Who cared? Proper or improper, whose business was it but Kitty
Conover's? Danger? That was the peculiar attraction. She wanted to rush
into danger, some tense excitement the strain of which would lift her
out of her mood. A recurrent touch of the wild impulsiveness of her
childhood. Hadn't she sometimes flown out into thunderstorms, after
merited punishment, to punish the mother whom thunder terrorized? And
now she was going to rush into unknown danger to punish Fate--like a
silly child! Nevertheless, she would go into the streets with Johnny
Two-Hawks.