Page:Wilson - Merton of the Movies (1922).djvu/309

 It developed quickly that she had but scant appetite for the choice food now being served. She could only taste bits here and there. Her plates were removed with their delicacies almost intact. Between courses her hand would seek his, gripping it as if in some nameless dread. He became worried about her state; his own appetite suffered.

Once she said as her hot hand clung to his, "I know where you'll be to-morrow night." Her voice grew mournful, despairing. "And I know perfectly well it's no good asking you to stay away."

He let this pass. Could it be that the girl was already babbling in delirium?

"And all the time," she presently went on, "I'll simply be sick a-bed, picking at the covers, all blue around the gills. That'll be me, while you're off to your old motion picture—'the so-called art of the motion picture,'" she concluded with a careful imitation of her father's manner.

He tried to determine whether she were serious or jesting. You never could tell about this girl. Whatever it was, it made him uneasy.

Outside he wished to take her home in a taxi-cab, but she would not hear to this. "We'll use the town-car, Gaston," she announced with a flash of her old manner as she waved to an on-coming street-car. During the long ride that followed she was silent but restless, tapping her foot, shifting in her seat, darting her head about. The one thing she did steadily was to clutch his arm.

During the walk from the car to the Montague house she twice indulged in her little dance step, even as she clung to the arm, but each time she seemed to think better of it and resumed a steady pace, her head down. The house was dark. Without speaking she unlocked the door and drew him into the little parlour.

"Stand right on that spot," she ordered, with a final pat of his shoulder, and made her way to the dining room beyond where she turned on a single light that faintly illumined the room in which he waited. She came back to him,