Susan’s face drained of color and her heart began to pound.
“Boy, that was fast,” she observed, feeling ill.
“Well, what did you expect? Aren’t you at this very moment living with another man?”
“Yes, but it isn’t like you think. Sherman isn’t even in town,” she explained.
Too distracted to remain any longer with Hugo, Susan wandered out into the night and again hailed a cab, anguished at the thought of Anthony’s plane going down in the Atlantic before she had a chance to see him again.
It took a very long time to get down into the Village in the rush hour gridlock and Susan’s eyes brimmed with tears more than once on the way.
Finally the taxi let her off at Anthony’s red brick 3-story and she beheld with joy the silver Bentley parked at the curb. This meant that he was probably home and Susan rushed inside calling his name.
Anthony emerged at the top of the stairs, in the act of knotting a silk foulard tie and glanced at her with a coolness and reserve quite unlike him. She ran upstairs at once, tearing off her hat and slicker. “Well?” he asked, folding his arms.
“I just came from Hugo. He said you were about to leave for England.”
“He knows a lot more about my schedule than I do,” Anthony replied.
“You’re not going abroad?”
“No.”
“Was Hugo also mistaken about your having a new secretary who’s in the scene?”
“Would it bother you if I did?”
“I’d hate it.”
“Funny, you haven’t been acting that way,” he observed, returning to the suite of rooms from which he had emerged. Susan followed and watched him pull on a double-breasted suit jacket of grey flannel.
“I’m sorry that I haven’t,” she exclaimed, “but do you have a new girlfriend or what?”
“I don’t know. I suppose the girl I’m going out with tonight could become my girlfriend one day,” he conjectured.
Susan paled at this painful supposition as her eyes blurred with tears.
“But I’m your girlfriend,” she protested.
“No you’re not.”
Susan sunk onto a large, richly upholstered sofa and burst into sobs.
“Are you bringing her home with you tonight?” she dared to ask.
“What does it matter? You won’t be here.”
“Yes I will,” she replied with spirit.
It was very difficult for Anthony to maintain an indifferent demeanor while his darling was in distress but he was hurt at being abandoned for five weeks. In addition, the fact that she had been living with his principal rival for her affections all month left him further incensed.
“In that case I won’t come home.”
“Please do!” she cried.
“No.”
“Anthony, I can’t believe that you don’t love me anymore,” Susan declared.
“The divine gift of my companionship has been squandered on you,” he told her severely.
“That’s not true! You know that you’re my one and only,” she quoted Gershwin, hoping to make him smile.
“Please, Susan, don’t make me laugh.”
“I mean in the greater scheme of things. Look, I’m just a kid. I don’t understand the protocol of relationships yet.”
“Is that so?” Anthony surveyed her guileless face with skepticism.
“The thing is, you’re so busy and popular that I really thought you’d barely notice my absence.”
“Susan, you’re studying the wrong profession, you ought to be a lawyer,” he told her, then added without humor, “now why don’t you stop lying.”
“All right, I hoped that if I disappeared for a while it would make you understand how disillusioned I was when you didn’t protect me from Hugo Sands.”
“What’s this about Hugo Sands?” Anthony flashed back on the scene in Hugo’s drawing room at the end of the summer and remembered with a start the look of mute appeal Susan had cast him after Hugo had ordered her to stand in the corner.
“You don’t even remember the situation, do you?”
“Of course I remember. Hugo had a plan for the evening and you began to interfere, so he wound up turning you over his knee.”
“In front of everyone.”
“You wanted me to prevent him from doing that?”
“Yes!”
“And that’s what your leaving me has been about?” Anthony was annoyed at himself for not having thought of this explanation before.
“Yes.”
“I see.”
“Oh, Anthony, I’m as sorry as can be about all of this.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“I’m sure you didn’t mean to be callous. Now that I’ve spoken to Hugo I realize that you might have enjoyed being a Roman. After all, we’re all in the scene and I was taking things too seriously, spoiling the fun. I guess I think too much.”
He would have embraced her just then, but Anthony’s sense of the theatrical demanded a postponement of their reconciliation.
“Well, I have a pressing engagement,” he informed her, as though their conversation had begun to bore him.
“Couldn’t you postpone it?”
“No.”
“May I wait for you here?”
“No.”
“I will anyway,” she returned.
“You do and you’ll get a good spanking. I’m about fed up with you.”
Susan felt a terrible thrill at these words. Anthony dialed his driver Dennis on the in-house phone and told him to warm up the car. Immediately after he hung up, the phone rang again. Anthony picked it up and began to chat briefly with a friend. This small event gave Susan an idea and she ran upstairs.
Hardly knowing what motivated her, for she was not normally a madcap, Susan ran down the back stairs to the first floor, exited the building through the kitchen, slipped through the garden gate into the alley and then out to the street where Dennis had just gotten into the Bentley. Susan made a dead run for the door, slipped into the passenger’s side, front seat and startling the wits out of the young English driver, curled up on the floor under the dash, well out of sight.
“Miss Susan, what are you doing?”
“Don’t give me away!” she commanded urgently.
Before Dennis, who had flushed deeply, could reply, Anthony opened the back door and got into the car. Susan tented her hands in a prayer to the driver.
“65th and Park, Dennis,” said Anthony, settling back for the ride lost in thought.
Dennis, who adored Susan, was now in a quandary. He dared not risk offending his generous employer, but he couldn’t think of betraying the young lady he most admired either. And yet why had she the need to play a prank like this? Deciding to ignore the situation and hope for the best, Dennis proceeded into the night.
“Dennis,