"If that is all," he replied eagerly, "you shall see it with your own eyes. You are staying with your uncle and aunt in Washington, are you not? I shall call upon you immediately I arrive, and bring it with me."
"Well, that remains a challenge, then, Mr. Fischer. And now, if you are quite ready," she added, turning to Lutchester.... "Good-by, everybody!"
"Aren't your ears burning?" Pamela asked, after Lutchester had handed her into a taxicab and taken his place by her side. "I can absolutely feel them talking about us."
"I seem to be most regrettably unpopular," Lutchester remarked.
"Even now I am puzzled about that," Pamela confessed, "but you see my aunt considers herself the arbitress of what is right or wrong in social matters, and she is exceedingly narrow-minded. In her eyes it is no doubt a greater misdemeanour for me to have dined at the Ritz-Carlton alone with you, than if I had conspired against the Government."
"And this, I thought, was the land of freedom for your sex!"
"Ah, but my aunt is rather an exception," Pamela reminded him. "The one thing I cannot understand, however, is that she should have allowed herself to be seen dining with Mr. Oscar Fischer at the Ritz-Carlton. I should have thought that would have been almost as heinous to her as my own little slip from grace."
"Is your aunt by way of being interested in politics?" Lutchester inquired.
"Not in a general way," Pamela replied, "but she is intensely ambitious, and she'd give her soul if Uncle Theodore could get a nomination for the Presidency."
"Perhaps she is taking up the German-American cause, then," Lutchester suggested. "It is a possible platform, at any rate."
"I foresee a new party," Pamela murmured thoughtfully. "Now I come to think of it, Mr. Elsworthy, the fat old gentleman who knew your uncle, is very pro-German."
"We have had enough politics," he insisted. "There is the other thing. Couldn't I have my answer?"
She let him take her fingers. In the cool darkness through which they were rushing her face seemed white, her head was a little averted. He tried to draw her to him, but she was unyielding.
"Please not," she begged. "I like you--and I'm glad I like you," she added, "but I don't feel certain about anything. Couldn't we be just friends a little longer?"