It was absurd, impossible, not to be thought of, and
yet all the time his insistence delighted her. He had so much the air of
one who has always his own way. She felt her powers of resistance
becoming almost impotent, and she watched their dissipation with secret
joy. How was it possible to resist a lover so confident, so
authoritative, especially when her whole heart was filled with a
passionate longing to throw everything else to the winds and to place
her hands in his. Perhaps by to-morrow, she thought, things would seem
different to her, but in the meantime she gave him the address of the
boarding-house in Russell Street. How could she help it!
"I shall be there," he said, "sometime before twelve to-morrow morning.
You won't be going out before then?"
"I--suppose not," she faltered.
He called the waiter and asked for the bill for his dinner. Hers she had
already paid. She rose to her feet.
"Please," she said earnestly, "do not come out with me. I am going now,
and where I am going I must go alone."
He glanced opposite, to where the three men were still sitting.
"Very well," he said, "I will let you go. You will permit me, I presume,
to see you out of the restaurant?"
He walked down with her to the door, and would have called a hansom, but
she answered that she preferred to walk.
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