She made no answer and he pressed for some response.

“Won’t she?” he pleaded.

Her eyes still fixed on the cab, now fast disappearing in the distance, she murmured: 

“Perhaps.”

“When will that be?” he went on eagerly.

She shook her head, irritated at his persistence at such a moment.

“I do not know,” she replied coldly.

Thus far, Stafford had succeeded in keeping from his friends any intimation of his matrimonial plans, but it was hardly possible to keep the secret much longer.  He and Virginia had been seen together in public places; his many visits to her house were known.  Her sudden resignation from the hotel also had excited comment.  People began to connect their names in a way unflattering to both.  Such slanderous rumors must be stopped at any cost, thought Stafford to himself, and one evening at Delmonico’s, while in a jovial, communicative mood, an opportunity came to unbosom himself freely to his friend Hadley.  It was the latter’s birthday and they were duly celebrating the occasion as three bottles of Veuve Clicquot, standing empty on the table, bore mute witness.

Stafford had been drinking freely.  His face was flushed and his voice was thick, familiar symptoms when he had imbibed more wine than was good for him.  The secret came out suddenly owing to a chance remark dropped by Hadley, who, sober himself and speaking of women in general, argued that girls who were compelled by necessity to earn their own living formed a class by themselves.  They could not be classed with the domesticated girl of good family because they were open to temptations and contaminating influences which the latter escaped.  Coming in close contact with the busy, feverish world, associating on terms of daily intimacy with all kinds of men, the naturally high moral sense of the virtuous woman must necessarily become blunted in her new business surroundings.

“Once the bloom is off a woman’s moral sense,” he argued, “it is only a step to the undermining of her virtue.  It’s inevitable,” he went on as he sat back in his chair idly enjoying his cigar.  “The home is the young girl’s only protection.  Take her out of it and you expose her to the manoeuvres of the first scoundrel who comes along.  If she’s temperamentally cold, she’ll resist the seducer successfully; but if she’s weak and pleasure-loving, she’ll succumb and the devil will have won over another convert.  Take, for instance, those stenographers in your hotel.  That Miss Blaine—­she’s as pretty as—­”

Crash!

There was a blow of a heavy fist falling on the table.  The dishes danced, glasses fell in splinters on to the floor.  Hadley, startled, turned round.  Stafford, his handsome face flushed from the champagne, but now tense and angry, was looking at him fiercely: 

“Take care, old chap, how you talk of Miss Blaine!  She’s going to be my wife!”