Page:The wheels of chance -- a bicycling idyll.djvu/152

138 in the Vicuna Hotel, Bognor, the crisis had come, and Jessie, flushed and angry in the face and with her heart sinking, faced him again for her last struggle with him. He had tricked her this time, effectually, and luck had been on his side. She was booked as Mrs. Beaumont. Save for her refusal to enter their room, and her eccentricity of eating with unwashed hands, she had so far kept up the appearances of things before the waiter. But the dinner was grim enough. Now in turn she appealed to his better nature and made extravagant statements of her plans to fool him.

He was white and vicious by this time, and his anger quivered through his pose of brilliant wickedness.

"I will go to the station," she said. "I will go back—"

"The last train for anywhere leaves at 7.42."

"I will appeal to the police—"

"You don't know them."

"I will tell these hotel people."

"They will turn you out of doors. You're in such a thoroughly false position now. They don't understand—unconventionally, down here."

She stamped her foot. "If I wander about the streets all night—" she said.

"You who have never been out alone after dusk?