"Lilly, for God's sake, get hold of yourself!"
"Let me go! Let me go!"
"Aw no; we don't leggo. It's a good stroke we both happened to spy you
at the same minute. There's nothin' gives strength like a spell of the
craziness. You'd 'a' jumped me alone, sure!"
"No! No! It wasn't that--God, not that! Tell me, Bruce, it
wasn't--that."
"Of course it wasn't, Lilly."
"That's what they all say once they git their senses jerked back. Come
in here and pull yourself together, girl, or I'll call an ambulance or a
patrol, suiting your pleasure."
"Let me go, you! I won't stand it. I must have been mad! Bruce, you tell
him, please--it wasn't--that!"
"You're wrong, old man. Here--take this for your trouble, but this young
woman is my sister. We walked out here together."
Quieted suddenly to the merest timbre of insolence, the old man shambled
off.
"Sure!" he said, far too knowingly. "Sure!" And faded shaggily,
impudently into darkness.
Bruce Visigoth took Lilly home in a taxicab. At her door she broke her
shamed silence.
"You understand, Bruce, it wasn't anything--like that. It must have been
nerves--tiredness--but nothing, Bruce, that you think it was.
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