Page:Harold Macgrath--The girl in his house.djvu/98

 out-argued and logic had its legs knocked from under. He fought it, denied it, forswore it, but always, like the north wind, the idea returned. It grew like the genie free of the bottle; and he knew that in his case he never could coax it back into he bottle again. I don't suppose he would have changed his plans even if he could have seen what was forward—the bullet that was nearly to write "Finis" to his pleasant if rather checkered career.

Rather a peculiar thing happened at the dinner Betty Burlingham gave to Clare to announce her engagement to Wickliffe. After dinner and the solemn announcement that Clare was ready to risk her liberty once more, there was dancing in the big drawing-room. Doris, of course, did not dance—that is, not well enough to risk a flight across the glistening floor. She and Armitage watched the dancers for a while. Suddenly she leaned toward him. "Let's go home," she said in a whisper.

The suggestion hypnotized him; the phrase was so intimate and companionable. Home, her home and still his! For it was his morally, no matter how well legally she