Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/79

 "I'm going to dinner," she announced firmly. "May I beg that you will take pity on me and dine with me?" suggested her new companion. "I'm a stranger in the city and lonely. Your face, as I passed you, looked very much as I felt. I took the liberty of following you and speaking to you like a beggar asking alms. Won't you give me the pleasure of your company for an hour or two over our dinner?"

It was all wrong, conventionally wrong. Miss Imboden was acutely conscious of that. But the river would be all wrong, too, and surely this gnawing hunger, this faintness, this queer feeling in her head were wrong as well. Better dinner with a stranger than the river by herself. She would accept his invitation, yes, but under no false pretences.

"Thank you," she said with quiet dignity, "I will dine with you, with pleasure. I have not dined for two days."

He looked at her with a start, and the eyes of the man of the world read the truth in the face beside him. He muttered a startled ejaculation under his breath, and, quickening