“It is like old times, isn’t it?” she said.  “And it does seem good.  You don’t mind, do you,—­for ten minutes?”

“Ten minutes?” he echoed dully.

She knew then, as she had indeed been aware from the first, that he was drunk and that only by the most painful effort, could he command his scattered wits at all.  It made her want to cry that he should be trying so hard.  She must not cry.  That would be the final outrage.  She must be very simple and clear.  She must—­must contrive to make him understand.

“Will you listen to me, dear, and do exactly what I ask you to?  I want you to go back to your people and forget that you have seen me at all.”

“I am going to take you home—­out of this,” he said laboriously.

“I’m going home soon, but not with you.  I want you to go back to—­to the girl you brought here.  No, dear, listen.  This is the only reason I sent for you.  To tell you that I wasn’t going to try to scold you.  I don’t mind a bit.  I want to tell you that, so that when you come back to me to-morrow or next day or whenever your party is quite over, you won’t feel that you have anything to try to explain or apologize for.  Now take me back to my place and then go on to yours.”

“I won’t take you back to him,” he said doggedly.  “What do you think I am?  I’m drunk, but not enough for that.  I am going to take you home.”

She tried to laugh but in spite of herself it was more like a sob.

“Rush, dear, don’t be silly.  I am perfectly all right—­or would be if I hadn’t drunk quite so much champagne.  They’ll take me home.  His wife’s here with him and they’re old friends of mine.  They know a lot of our friends in Chicago.  Please, Rush....”

“Do you think I’d go back to that—­” he managed to pull up on the edge of an ugly word—­“back to those people, and leave you here?  Is it your wrap on that chair?  We’ll stop and get it and then we’ll go.”

She could have wept with vexation over the way her scheme had gone awry but there was clearly nothing else to do.  She retrieved her cloak, simply said good night to Christabel and the man named Black, leaving Baldy to explain things as he chose.

Five minutes later she gave a taxi driver the address of her flat and dropped back against the cushions beside her brother.  Neither of them spoke a word during that fifteen-minute drive.  Mary wept quietly most of the way—­it didn’t matter there in the dark.  The thought of this splendid glorious brother of hers painfully endeavoring to drag himself back into a state of sobriety from his first wild caper after long wearing of the harness of discipline—­an escapade she supposed that he must have been looking forward to for days—­dragging himself back to protect her—­oh, it was too hopeless!  Should she ever be able to explain to him why she had sent for him, and that her intentions had been the opposite of those of the moralizing meddler he would