"You'll like to think about it?" asked Keith. "Like to remember
to-night?"

"Will _you_?" parried Jenny. "The night you had Jenny Blanchard to
supper?" Their eyes met, in a long and searching glance, in which
candour was not unmixed with a kind of measuring distrust.


vii

Keith's face might have been carven for all the truth that Jenny got
from it then. There darted across her mind the chauffeur's certainty
that she was to be his passenger. She took another sip of wine.

"Yes," she said again, very slowly. "You _were_ sure I was coming. You
got it all ready. Been a bit of a sell if I hadn't come. You'd have had
to set to and eat it yourself.... Or get somebody else to help you."

She meant "another girl," but she did not know she meant that until the
words were spoken. Her own meaning stabbed her heart. That icy knowledge
that Keith was sure of her was bitterest of all. It made her happiness
defiant rather than secure. He was the only man for her. How did she
know there were not other women for Keith! How could she ever know that?
Rather, it sank into her consciousness that there must be other women.
His very ease showed her that. The equanimity of his laughing expression
brought her the unwelcome knowledge.

"I should have looked pretty small if I'd made no preparations,
shouldn't I?" Keith inquired in a dry voice. "If you'd come here and
found the place cold and nothing to eat you'd have made a bit of a