"Oh," she whispered. Keegan looked at her dizzily. "He saw...."
"Aubrey Gilchrist saw you." Her face flushed.
"Did he?" Keegan leaned against the icebox. He felt weak.
"I'm sure he did," Fanny insisted, an elated note in her voice, "I'm just positive."
"He couldn't have seen much if he did, from where he was standing," Keegan murmured.
"I don't care anyway," Fanny smiled. Keegan felt a thrill at the words. She loved him and didn't care who knew!
"Neither do I," he agreed. He felt glad they had been seen. It made him blush inside but he was glad.
"Oh, what do we care?" Fanny cried, "if the old stick-in-the-mud did see." Keegan reached his hands to her but she eluded him and darted into the kitchen.
"Hurry, chop the ice," she called. She was confused. For a moment she had been surprised by an emotion--a curious, unsensual desire for the awkward Keegan. She had felt her heart yield to his embrace as she usually felt her body do. But the whole thing had been for Aubrey's benefit. It had started with an intention of making Aubrey jealous by flirting with Keegan. And when Aubrey had refused to show any signs of jealousy she had carried the flirtation further until it had seemed logical to kiss and embrace Keegan as a part of her original ambition to stir Aubrey. But she had been stirred herself by the man's kiss. Yet now that Aubrey was gone she had lost all interest in Hugh. She wanted to hurry back where the novelist was.
She glanced apprehensively toward the door. Doris was standing looking at her.
"Mr. Ramsey has come. Mother said to set another place."
Doris nodded. Keegan was standing in the center of the room smiling inanely at the sink.
Mrs. Basine was embarassed by the arrival of her friend Tom Ramsey. He had been a friend of her husband and a rumor had become current that he was now courting her. She denied this with indignation. To herself she admitted she liked to be alone with him. He was a sour-minded man with a liver-red face, a patrician nose and the look of a man of importance. But he was too thin and too short to live up to this look.
In the presence of others he usually fell into a silence unless one of the two or three subjects on which he felt himself an authority came up. These subjects were things that had to do with advertising--effective copy, effective display, prices, results. Mr. Ramsey was in the advertising business.