Whereby he was somewhat startled and put out of countenance.
"I hope so," she said, with no diminution of her inscrutability.
They were in a taxicab, rolling along the Embankment towards the Buckingham Palace Hotel, where she said she lived. He was happy. "Why am I happy?" he thought. "What is there in her that makes me happy?" He did not know. But he knew that he had never been in a taxicab, or anywhere else, with any woman half so elegant. Her elegance flattered him enormously. Here he was, a provincial man of business, ruffling it with the best of them! ... And she was young in her worldly maturity. Was she twenty-seven? She could not be more. She looked straight in front of her, faintly smiling.... Yes, he was fully aware that he was a married man. He had a distinct vision of the angelic Nellie, of the three children, and of his mother. But it seemed to him that his own case differed in some very subtle and yet effective manner from the similar case of any other married man. And he lived, unharassed by apprehensions, in the lively joy of the moment.
"But," she said, "I hope you won't come to see me act."
"Because I should prefer you not to. You would not be sympathetic to me."
"I shouldn't feel it so." And then with a swift disarrangement of all the folds of her skirt she turned and faced him. "Mr. Machin, do you know why I've let you come with me?"
"Because you're a good-natured woman," he said.
"No! I simply wanted to tell you that you've ruined Rose, my cousin."
"Yes. You robbed her of her theatre--her one chance."
He blushed. "Excuse me," he said, "I did no such thing. I simply bought her option from her. She was absolutely free to keep the option or let it go."
"The fact remains," said Elsie April, with humid eyes, "the fact remains that she'd set her heart on having that theatre, and you failed her at the last instant. And she has nothing, and you've got the theatre entirely in your own hands. I'm not so silly as to suppose that you can't defend yourself legally. But let me tell you that Rose went to the United States heart-broken, and she's playing to empty houses there--empty houses! Whereas she might have been here in London, interested in her theatre, and preparing for a successful season."