Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/86

84 "Ill? What made you ill?"

"He did—Gerald. He told me he was going to get drunk."

"He did! By Jove, poor old Gerald—I began to think he might be going to run straight after all. But now he'll go it, once he's broken out. Poor devil!"

"What—will he do?" asked Teresa faintly.

"Do! He'll drink whisky till he's blind drunk, and then, when he's got his breath, he'll begin again. He'll keep it up for a week, very likely, and then somebody'll pick him up out of the gutter, and he'll be sick and sorry for a month."

"What horrid idiots men are," said Teresa. "Perhaps they are, but they're not so egotistic as women," said Basil stiffly, recollecting his grievance.

He sat silent for a moment, moving his shoulders nervously. Teresa smiled in the darkness. He did not want to go to bed with that grievance. He was tired of it. She was silent, too, wickedly.

"Good-night!" he said abruptly, getting up.

She let him get to the door, then she called him back.

"Oh, come here a minute, I want to ask you something." "Well, what is it?" He stood still.

"Come here, can't you?"

"Can't you ask from there?"