"Stop right where you are! Don't come any nearer. For the love of Mike, don't!"
She had been thinking of treating him coldly, to keep him at a distance.
"What is it?" she asked again, and again advanced.
She now felt alarmed, without giving herself any reason for it.
She stared at him. He was looking at her so queerly that naturally she thought something had happened to her face. She looked into the mirror on her right. It was not so. Another look fully confirmed this. So she looked at him. His expression had lost some of its anxiety.
"I promised your dad," he explained, "that I would not see you after to-day, or call here, or try to make love to you by mail, or annoy you or him in any way until I had wiped the sandwich stain off your surname. I have a month in which to do it, and I promised all that! One month! Not to see you! But--"
He looked at her so hungrily that, born and bred in New York though she was, she blushed hotly and turned her face away. Then she felt the thrill by which victory is made plain to the defeated.
"But--but--" repeated H. R. through his clenched teeth, and took a step toward her.
Whatever she saw in his face made her smile and say, challengingly:
Being very wise, he caught his breath and said, sharply:
"Do what?" she asked, innocently, and kept on smiling.
"You won't?" She ceased to smile, in order to look skeptical.
"No, I won't; I'll keep my word, Grace." He was speaking very earnestly now. "I love you--all of you; the good and the bad, your wonderful woman's soul and your perennial childishness. You are so beautiful in so many ways that you yourself cannot know how completely beautiful you are. But I love more than your beauty. After it is all over you will realize that I can be trusted implicitly. Never has man been put to such a task. Don't you know--can't you see what I am doing?"
She knew; she saw. She felt herself mistress of the situation. She therefore said, softly:
"I shouldn't want you to commit suicide here."
Hearing no reply, she looked at him. He was ready for it. She saw his nostrils dilate and his fists clench and unclench.
"Then I won't see you. But--but you can see me," he said.
He went on: "I shall lunch every day at Jerry's--small table in the northeast corner. At one o'clock every day for a whole month."