He had checked the confession that impulsively had surged toward her lips.  Silent, her eyes wide, her breath coming sharply, she sat gazing at him. . . .  And then from out the portion of her brain where were stored her purposes, and the momentum of her pride and determination, there flashed the realization that she had won!  The thing that Barney and Old Jimmie had prepared and she had so skillfully worked toward, was at last achieved!  She had only to say “yes,” and either of those two plans which Barney had outlined could at once be put in operation —­and there could be no doubt of the swift success of either.  Dick’s eager, trusting face was guarantee that there would come no obstruction from him.

She felt that in some strange way she had been caught in a trap.  Yes, what they had worked for, they had won!  And yet, in this moment of winning, as elements of her vast dizziness, Maggie felt sick and ashamed—­felt a frenzied desire to run away from the whole affair.  For Maggie, cynical, all-confident, and eighteen, was proving really a very poor adventuress.

“Please, Maggie”—­his imploring voice broke in upon her—­“won’t you answer me?  You like me, don’t you?—­you’ll marry me, won’t you?”

“I like you, Dick,” she choked out—­and it was some slight comfort to her to be telling this much of the truth—­“but—­but I can’t marry you.”

“Maggie!” It was a cry of surprised pain, and the pain in his voice shot acutely into her.  “From the way you acted toward me—­I thought—­I hoped—­” He sharply halted the accusation which had risen to his lips.  “I’m not going to take that answer as final, Maggie,” he said doggedly.  “I’m going to give you more time to think it over—­more time for me to try.  Then I’ll ask you again.”

That which prompted Maggie’s response was a mixture of impulses:  the desire, and this offered opportunity, to escape; and a faint reassertion of the momentum of her purpose.  For with one such as Maggie, the set purposes may be seemingly overwhelmed, but death comes hard.

“All right,” she breathed rapidly.  “Only please get me back as quickly as you can.  I’m to have dinner with my—­my cousin, and I’ll be very late.”

Dick drove her into the city in almost unbroken silence and left her at the great doors of the Grantham, abustle with a dozen lackeys in purple livery.  She stood a moment and watched him drive away.  He really was a nice boy—­Dick.

As she shot up the elevator, she thought of a hitherto forgotten element of that afternoon’s bewildering situation.  Barney Palmer!  And Barney was, she knew, now up in her sitting-room, impatiently waiting for her report of what he had good reason to believe would prove a successful experience.  If she told the truth—­that Dick had proposed, just as they had planned for him to do—­and she had refused him—­why, Barney—!

She seemed caught on every side!

Maggie got into her suite by way of her bedroom.  She wanted time to gather her wits for meeting Barney.  When Miss Grierson told her that her cousin was still waiting to take her to dinner, she requested her companion to inform Barney that she would be in as soon as she had dressed.  She wasted all the time she legitimately could in changing into a dinner-gown, and when at length she stepped into her sitting-room she was to Barney’s eye the same cool Maggie as always.