Frightened though he was, her wretchedness appealed to him. The
thought that she cared for him, too, was a salve to his outraged
pride. A moment ago, in the other room, he had felt like a bad
small boy. As with Marion, Anna made him feel every inch a man.
But she gave him what Marion did not, the feeling of her complete
surrender. Marion would take; this girl would give.
He bent down and put his arms around her.
"Poor little girl!" he said. "Poor little girl!"
CHAPTER XV
The gay and fashionable crowd of which Audrey had been the center
played madly that winter. The short six weeks of the season were
already close to an end. By mid-January the south and California
would have claimed most of the women and some of the men. There
were a few, of course, who saw the inevitable catastrophe: the
Mackenzies had laid up their house-boat on the west coast of Florida.
Denis Nolan had let his little place at Pinehurst. The advance wave
of the war tide, the increased cost of living, had sobered and made
thoughtful the middle class, but above in the great businesses, and
below among the laboring people, money was plentiful and
extravagance ran riot.
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