"I promise."
"I'll tell you a little secret. It was the boss who sent you out of
town. He was afraid you'd do something like this. When you are ready to
go home you'll find Tony Bernini downstairs. Sore as a crab, too, I'll
bet."
"I'll be glad to go home with him," said Kitty, thoroughly chastened in
spirit.
"That's all for to-night."
Kitty and Hawksley stepped out into the corridor, the problem they
had sought to shake off reestablished in their thoughts, added too, if
anything.
"How do you feel?"
"Top-hole," lied Hawksley. "My word, though, I wobbled a bit going
round that block. I almost kissed the hobby. I say, he thought I'd been
tilting a few. But it was a lark!"
"Dinner is served," announced Kuroki at their elbows. His expression was
coldly bland.
"Dinner!" cried Hawksley, brightening. "What does the American soldier
say?"
"Eats!" answered Kitty.
All tension vanished in the double laughter that followed. They
approached dinner with something of the spirit that had induced Hawksley
to fiddle and Kitty to pass the hat in front of the Metropolitan Opera
House. Hawksley's recuperative powers promised well for his future. By
the time coffee was served his head had cleared and his legs had resumed
their normal functions of support.
"I was so infernally bored!"
"And now?" asked Kitty, recklessly.
"Fancy asking me that!"
"Do you realize that all this is dreadfully improper?"
"Oh, I say, now! Where's the harm? If ever there was a young woman
capable of taking care of herself--"
"That isn't it. It's just being here alone with you."
"But you are not alone with me!"
"Kuroki?" Kitty shrugged.
"No. At my side of the table is Stefani Gregor; at yours the man who has
befriended me."
"Thank you for that. I don't know of anything nicer you could say. But
the outside world would see neither of our friends. I did not come here
to see you."
"No need of telling me that."
"I had a problem--a very difficult one--to solve; and I believed that I
might solve it if I came to these rooms. I had quite forgotten you."
Instantly, upon receiving this blunt explanation, he determined that she
should never cease to remember him after this night. His vanity was not
touched; it was something far more elusive. It was perhaps a recurrence
of that inexplicable desire to hurt. Somehow he sensed the flexible
steel behind which lay the soul of this baffling girl. He would
presently find a chink in the armour with that old Amati.