"Oh, Dobyans! Don't you see? I ... I ... You made me."
"Made you?"
She was standing in profile toward him. He could see the quiver of her lip and the shadows beneath her eyes. Already he felt the lift of the big wave that was to float him to success.
"I ... have no mother."
"Don't take the point."
She spoke as a troubled child, as if to the breezes of the night. "I have to be careful. You know how people talk. Could I let them say that I ... ran after you?" The last words were almost in a whisper.
"Do you mean...?"
"Oh, couldn't you see? How blind men are!"
The little man, moved to his soul because this proud beauty was so deeply in love with him, took her in his arms and kissed her.
A little shudder went through her blood. It had not been two hours since Jack Kilmeny's kisses had sent a song electrically into her veins. But she trod down the momentary nausea with the resolute will that had always been hers. Verinder had paid for the right to caress her. He had offered his millions for the privilege. She too must pay the price for what she received.
"We must go in," she told him presently. "They will wonder."
"They won't wonder long, by Jove," he replied, a surge of triumph in his voice.
Joyce looked at him quickly. "You're not going to tell them to-night?"
He nodded. "To-night, my beauty."
"Oh, no. Please not to-night. Let's ... keep it to ourselves for a few days, dear." The last word was a trifle belated, but that might be because she was not used to it.
Verinder shot a look of quick suspicion at her. "I'm going to tell them to-night--as soon as we get back into the room."
"But ... surely it's for me to say that, Dobyans. I want to keep our little secret for awhile." She caught with her hands the lapels of his dinner jacket and looked pleadingly at him.
"No--to-night." He had a good deal of the obstinacy characteristic of many stupid men, but this decision was based on shrewd sense. He held the upper hand. So long as they were in the neighborhood of Jack Kilmeny he intended to keep it.
"Even though I want to wait?"
"Why do you want to wait?" he demanded sullenly. "Because of that fellow Kilmeny?"
She knew that she had gone as far as she dared. "How absurd. Of course not. Tell them if you like, but--it's the first favor I've asked of you since----"
Her voice faltered and broke. It held a note of exquisite pathos. Verinder felt like a brute, but he did not intend to give way.