Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/297

 taurant floor where dance music again was playing. When he was gone, Billy advanced and seized Marjorie's arm. A waiter or some one must have carried her gloves and handbag from the table where she had been dining; anyway, here they were on a chair.

"These are yours?" said Billy.

She nodded and he swept them up and led her out through the door to the sidewalk and around to his car.

"Get in," he ordered her.

No one outside noticed them; if any of those who had witnessed Billy's coming were waiting further developments, they must be on watch inside; but there were people passing and there was a policeman on the corner who, of course, would take the side of a girl against a man trying to force her to accompany him in a car. Marjorie thought of these, and she brought them to Billy's mind when she said, "I will go with you, if you will take me home."

"Where's your home?" he returned. "I want to see it." Then definitely he agreed. "Yes; I'll take you there."

So she got in and gave him Jen Cordeen's number on Clearedge Street. The repetition of the address stiffened his clasp on her arm, for after he had her in the car, he held to her, as though she might escape, while with his other hand and a foot he operated the spark lever and the starter.

Clearedge Street, in spite of the weeks she had lived there, became to her at moments that flat of Mrs. Russell's; to Billy it meant only that; and she felt him grasping and half releasing her arm and re-grasping her in his renewed terror,—in his insulting terror for her after she had told him her address.