"
"That's very interesting."
"It _is_ rather too cold to walk," he said, briskly, to hide his
annoyance.
She made no answer and he wondered if she would dismiss him at the hotel
entrance. She walked in without speaking, however, and to the elevator,
throwing him a single remark as she entered it:
"You'd better come up."
He hesitated for the fraction of a moment.
"Perhaps I'd better call some other time."
"Just as you say." Her words were murmured as an aside. The main concern
of life was the adjusting of some stray wisps of hair in the elevator
mirror. Her cheeks were brilliant, her eyes sparkled--she had never
seemed so lovely, so exquisitely to be desired.
Despising himself, he found that he was walking down the tenth-floor
corridor a subservient foot behind her; was in the sitting room while
she disappeared to shed her furs. Something had gone wrong--in his own
eyes he had lost a shred of dignity; in an unpremeditated yet
significant encounter he had been completely defeated.
However, by the time she reappeared in the sitting-room he had explained
himself to himself with sophistic satisfaction. After all he had done
the strongest thing, he thought.
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