第41章

Wessels.Mr.Corthell--those were _his_ hansoms, of course.But I wanted an umbrella, and I gave the driver seventy-five cents.""Why of course, of course," said Laura, not quite divining what he was driving at.

"I don't want you to think that I would be willing to put myself under obligations to anybody.""Of course, Landry; I understand."

He thrilled at once.

"Ah," he cried, "you don't know what it _means_ to me to look into the eyes of a woman who really understands."Laura stared, wondering just what she had said.

"Will you turn this hall light out for me, Landry?" she asked."I never can reach."He left the front door open and extinguished the jet in its dull red globe.Promptly they were involved in darkness.

"Good-night," she said."Isn't it dark?"He stretched out his hand to take hers, but instead his groping fingers touched her waist.Suddenly Laura felt his arm clasp her.Then all at once, before she had time to so much as think of resistance, he had put both arms about her and kissed her squarely on her cheek.

Then the front door closed, and she was left abruptly alone, breathless, stunned, staring wide-eyed into the darkness.

Her first sensation was one merely of amazement.She put her hand quickly to her cheek, first the palm and then the back, murmuring confusedly:

"What? Why?--why?"

Then she whirled about and ran up the stairs, her silks clashing and fluttering about her as she fled, gained her own room, and swung the door violently shut behind her.She turned up the lowered gas and, without knowing why, faced her mirror at once, studying her reflection and watching her hand as it all but scoured the offended cheek.

Then, suddenly, with an upward, uplifting rush, her anger surged within her.She, Laura, Miss Dearborn, who loved no man, who never conceded, never capitulated, whose "grand manner" was a thing proverbial, in all her pitch of pride, in her own home, her own fortress, had been kissed, like a school-girl, like a chambermaid, in the dark, in a corner.

And by--great heavens!--_Landry Court._ The boy whom she fancied she held in such subjection, such profound respect.Landry Court had dared, had dared to kiss her, to offer her this wretchedly commonplace and petty affront, degrading her to the level of a pretty waitress, making her ridiculous.

She stood rigid, drawn to her full height, in the centre of her bedroom, her fists tense at her sides, her breath short, her eyes flashing, her face aflame.

From time to time her words, half smothered, burst from her.

"What does he _think_ I _am?_ How dared he? How dared he?"All that she could say, any condemnation she could formulate only made her position the more absurd, the more humiliating.It had all been said before by generations of shop-girls, school-girls, and servants, in whose company the affront had ranged her.Landry was to be told in effect that he was never to presume to seek her acquaintance again.Just as the enraged hussy of the street corners and Sunday picnics shouted that the offender should "never dare speak to her again as long as he lived." Never before had she been subjected to this kind of indignity.And simultaneously with the assurance she could hear the shrill voice of the drab of the public balls proclaiming that she had "never been kissed in all her life before."Of all slights, of all insults, it was the one that robbed her of the very dignity she should assume to rebuke it.The more vehemently she resented it, the more laughable became the whole affair.

But she would resent it, she would resent it, and Landry Court should be driven to acknowledge that the sorriest day of his life was the one on which he had forgotten the respect in which he had pretended to hold her.He had deceived her, then, all along.Because she had--foolishly--relaxed a little towards him, permitted a certain intimacy, this was how he abused it.Ah, well, it would teach her a lesson.Men were like that.She might have known it would come to this.

Wilfully they chose to misunderstand, to take advantage of her frankness, her good nature, her good comradeship.

She had been foolish all along, flirting--yes, that was the word for it flirting with Landry and Corthell and Jadwin.No doubt they all compared notes about her.

Perhaps they had bet who first should kiss her.Or, at least, there was not one of them who would not kiss her if she gave him a chance.

But if she, in any way, had been to blame for what Landry had done, she would atone for it.She had made herself too cheap, she had found amusement in encouraging these men, in equivocating, in coquetting with them.Now it was time to end the whole business, to send each one of them to the right-about with an unequivocal definite word.She was a good girl, she told herself.She was, in her heart, sincere; she was above the inexpensive diversion of flirting.She had started wrong in her new life, and it was time, high time, to begin over again--with a clean page--to show these men that they dared not presume to take liberties with so much as the tip of her little finger.

So great was her agitation, so eager her desire to act upon her resolve, that she could not wait till morning.

It was a physical impossibility for her to remain under what she chose to believe suspicion another hour.If there was any remotest chance that her three lovers had permitted themselves to misunderstand her, they were to be corrected at once, were to be shown their place, and that without mercy.

She called for the maid, Annie, whose husband was the janitor of the house, and who slept in the top story.