Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/304

 like that," she stammered. "I didn't mean—but you know, Ian, I had to come and see you. We must talk, just for a few minutes. Have you a private sitting-room? If you have, take me there. We can't talk here. People may be coming and going."

"Very well," he said, in a dull, almost conventional tone, not unlike that of the servant who had called him to her. His eyes were dull, too. There was no light of joy in them kindled at sight of her.

"Oughtn't I to have come?" she asked, suddenly embarrassed. "Are you sorry I have come?"

"No, no," he said. "I am surprised, that's all. I am—thinking what to do."

"I know what to do. Take me out of this room to some other," she said, her voice quivering with the nervousness she had been restraining all day. She glanced at him anxiously. Perhaps it only was the crude light, as it had been with her, but he, too, looked ill, ill enough to die.

"If you won't mind," he answered apologetically. "I have a sitting-room on this floor—not far off. Only I've been writing letters in it all day. Papers are scattered everywhere."

"As if it mattered!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Ian, if you don't take me at once—if I have to stop in this awful room one more instant, I believe I shall have hysterics."

Alarmed at her loss of that gracious self-control,