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would go with you at any time, any place, but Perry is so nice, and he
so much wants me to marry him – "
Anson smiled contemptuously – he had had experience with
such decoy epistles. Moreover, he knew how Dolly had labored over
this plan, probably sent for the faithful Perry and calculated the time
of his arrival – even labored over the note so that it would make him
jealous without driving him away. Like most compromises, it had
neither force nor vitality but only a timorous despair.
Suddenly he was angry. He sat down in the lobby and read it
again. Then he went to the phone, called Dolly and told her in his
clear, compelling voice that he had received her note and would call
for her at five o'clock as they had previously planned. Scarcely
waiting for the pretended uncertainty of her "Perhaps I can see you
for an hour," he hung up the receiver and went down to his office. On
the way he tore his own letter into bits and dropped it in the street.
He was not jealous – she meant nothing to him – but at her
pathetic ruse everything stubborn and self-indulgent in him came to
the surface. It was a presumption from a mental inferior and it could
not be overlooked. If she wanted to know to whom she belonged she
would see.
He was on the door-step at quarter past five. Dolly was dressed
for the street, and he listened in silence to the paragraph of "I can only
see you for an hour," which she had begun on the phone.
"Put on your hat, Dolly," he said, "we'll take a walk."
They strolled up Madison Avenue and over to Fifth while
Anson's shirt dampened upon his portly body in the deep heat. He
talked little, scolding her, making no love to her, but before they had
walked six blocks she was his again, apologizing for the note,
offering not to see Perry at all as an atonement, offering anything.
She thought that he had come because he was beginning to love her.
"I'm hot," he said when they reached 71st Street. "This is a
winter suit. If I stop by the house and change, would you mind
waiting for me down-stairs? I'll only be a minute."
She was happy; the intimacy of his being hot, of any physical
fact about him, thrilled her. When they came to the iron-grated door
and Anson took out his key she experienced a sort of delight.
Downstairs it was dark, and after he ascended in the lift Dolly
raised a curtain and looked out through opaque lace at the houses
over the way. She heard the lift machinery stop, and with the notion