“They can’t bluff me, they’ll have to guess again. It’s that damned Holster—he hasn’t any guts—he’d give in to ’em right now if I’d let him. It’s the limit the way he turned the Clarendon over to them. I’ll show him how to put a crimp in ’em if they don’t turn up here to-morrow morning.”
He was so magnificently sure of her sympathy! She did, not reply, but picked up her coat from the chair where she had laid it.
“Where are you going?” he demanded. And she replied laconically, “Home.”
“Wait a minute,” he said, rising and taking a step toward her.
“You have an appointment with the Mayor,” she reminded him.
“I know,” he said, glancing at the clock over the door. “Where have you been?—where were you this morning? I was worried about you, I—I was afraid you might be sick.”
“Were you?” she said. “I’m all right. I had business in Boston.”
“Why didn’t you telephone me? In Boston?” he repeated.
She nodded. He started forward again, but she avoided him.
“What’s the matter?” he cried. “I’ve been worried about you all day —until this damned strike broke loose. I was afraid something had happened.”
“You might have asked my father,” she said.
“For God’s sake, tell me what’s the matter!”
His desire for her mounted as his conviction grew more acute that something had happened to disturb a relationship which, he had congratulated himself, after many vicissitudes and anxieties had at last been established. He was conscious, however, of irritation because this whimsical and unanticipated grievance of hers should have developed at the moment when the caprice of his operatives threatened to interfere with his cherished plans—for Ditmar measured the inconsistencies of humanity by the yardstick of his desires. Her question as to why he had not made inquiries of her father added a new element to his disquietude. As he stood thus, worried, exasperated, and perplexed, the fact that there was in her attitude something ominous, dangerous, was slow to dawn on him. His faculties were wholly unprepared for the blow she struck him.