Eric pretended to look at his watch and even walked away to the nearest lamp-post, where he looked at it again. He had still two hours’ work to do, but the girl’s dejection of voice and her candid admission of failure touched him.
“Yes. You won’t compromise _me_; and I shouldn’t mind if you did,” she added with a touch of her old impatience. “I was thinking of you. You’re so well-known—”
“If you’re all by yourself... _I_’m thinking of _you_—”
She sighed gently and held out her hand. Loneliness and the sense of failure seemed to have taken away all her vitality: her hand was cold and limp, and her head drooped as though she lacked the strength to keep it erect.
“Let me come to tea some day,” Eric suggested.
“Oh, you’re too busy. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“Aren’t you?” She made a pitiful attempt to collect the fragments of her pride; but the drooping head and unsteady lips belied the valiance of her voice, and haughtiness passed quickly into petulance. “You were too busy to dine with us, when I invited you; you were too busy to see me when I called on you, too busy even to answer my letter.”
“Miss Maitland, I simply don’t understand! I couldn’t dine with you, because I never dine out when I’ve a play on hand. But the call and the letter—”
“Your maid said you couldn’t see me, as I hadn’t an appointment.”
“I must apologize for her. She probably thought you’d come to ask for an engagement.”
“I had. And that’s what I wrote about. You said in New York that I might come to you for help; I couldn’t go to your club, because father’s a member. Didn’t you get my letter?”
“If it had anything to do with the theatre, I don’t suppose I finished it; all those things are sent on to Manders. I’m sorry, Miss Maitland; I wouldn’t have disappointed you for the world.”
“I began to feel desperate,” she answered dully. “It seemed needlessly unkind. Of course, I ought to have known that you were very famous—”
“Please! I’ve apologized. I hoped I’d cleared myself. Won’t you choose your own time for coming,—if you think I can do any good?”
She swung her latch-key reflectively and then touched his arm with her fingers.
“Won’t you come in—just for a moment?” she pleaded.
“You’ll do me more good by coming in for five minutes than by thinking of my reputation... I’m desperate.”