She wanted nothing so much as escape and to work hereafter, never upon her womanliness, but with her hands and head. She wanted nothing, nothing in common with these girls about her, re-rouging and re-arraying themselves to proceed "somewhere else" to-night with their men. But she had to go out to Lew Alban.
He was awaiting her by the entrance, where he eyed the girls bound elsewhere, eagerly and gigglingly, with their escorts. Lew had obtained much from Ellen Powell. Her dread of him, her resistance to him, her excitement with him had supplied him with a pleasurable stimulus which he never could have received from these eager girls. The look of her gray eyes questioning him, the feel of her slight, supple body and her little, persistent repulses of him kept him stirred, but he had proceeded with her as far as he could to-night.
"No hurry," he had written her, after he had made his definite start with her. It would not be short and sudden, the obtaining of this girl. Indeed, he did not want her easily obtained. At any time he could pick up a girl to accompany him, eagerly and gigglingly, elsewhere. Accordingly, when Ellen rejoined him with a steadfast request to him to take her home, he surprised her by soon complying. On the way, he kissed her; but he took her home.
When she was applied again to the office tasks of her head and hands, Lew sauntered in with no apparent memory of the previous evening; and she tried to betray none. To Mr. Rountree and Jay, he volunteered his intention
