She was baffling, elusive, he could not understand her. For several days she had refused to dine alone with him in his rooms.
One night, when he was driving her home after the dinner at the Ritz and a box at the Comedy theatre, he had pressed her urgently. She had once more refused.
And then, something unveiled and brutal had risen within him. The wave of alcohol submerged all decency and propriety of speech. He was furiously, coarsely angry.
"Damn you!" he said. "What are you afraid of?--of compromising yourself? If there were half a dozen people in London who knew or cared what you did, you've done that long ago. And for heaven's sake don't play Tartuffe with me. Haven't I been kissing you as much as ever I wanted to for the last three days? Haven't you kissed me? You'll dine with me to-morrow night in St. James' Street or I'll get out of town at once and chuck it all. I've been an ass to come at all. I'm beginning to see that now. I've been leaving the substance for the shadow."
She answered nothing to this brutal tirade for a minute or two.
The facile anger died away from him. He cursed himself for his insane folly in jeopardising everything and felt compunction for his violence.
He was just about to explain and apologise when he heard a chuckle from the girl at his side.
He turned swiftly to her. Her face was alight with pleasure, mingled with an almost tender mischief. She laughed aloud.
"Of course I'll come, Gilbert dear," she said softly--"since you _command_ me!"
He realised at once that, like all women, she found joy in abdication when it was forced upon her. The dominant male mind had won in this little contest. He had bullied her roughly. It was a new sensation and she liked it.
But when she dined in the rooms and he tried to accomplish artificially what he had achieved spontaneously, she was on her guard and it was quite ineffectual.
They sat at a little round table. The dinner was simple, but perfectly served. During the meal, for once,--once again--he had talked like his old self, brilliantly touching upon literary things and illuminating much that had been dark to her before with that splendour of intellect which came back to him to-night for a space; and brought a trace of spirituality to his coarsening face.