The corpulency which was one day to envelop him like suet was already giving him the appearance of ten years his senior. He had upon occasion been mistaken for the father of his younger brother, and some of Lilly's acute distaste for him, across the slight enough chasm of the seven or eight years between them, was already that of youth for lascivious age. "Shall I take those letters now--Mr. Visigoth?" "I would rather take you--to dinner." "I might have known," she said, rather tiredly. "What?" "That you would not keep your word." "I have though, for eight weeks." "I thought your promise meant--" "Ah no. I never broke a promise in my life, but even I cannot be expected to keep one indefinitely with a girl like you within eyeshot." "That can be easily corrected." "Come now, I'm giving you your chance here to make good." "Well then, let me take it." "My dear girl, never expect the best of us to be more than human." "I suppose, then, this is to be the regulation, theatrical-manager-dangers-of-a-big-city kind of scene." "Come now," he said, his voice plushy with the right to intimacy. "We understand each other--Lilly." She stood silent, flaming her humiliation. "And I like you for it. If there is one thing to my mind less interesting than another, it is the untempted kind of woman who--" "I never pretended to you, Mr. Visigoth, that I was what you are pleased to term--tempted!" "No? But how much more redeeming if you had been." "Nothing can ever redeem that--night--except--" "Except?" "Oh, I don't know--maybe--except--God." "You funny, funny girl!" he repeated. "I like you." "I know your kind of liking. You like me for the kind of thing you would protect your wife or your daughter from with all the fury of your little elemental soul." "I haven't a wife, I haven't a daughter, and I like you." "No, but you will have presently. Your kind always does and you'll be the ideal family man who telephones home from the office three times a day to see if the baby has taken her cough medicine regularly, and you'll knock the man down that brushes your wife too closely in a crowd, and because of your attitude toward all but your own women you'll suspect every man who even approaches your daughter. In the eyes of the world you're entitled to your wild oats. That's what I am, a wild oat to be sown at your pleasure. If you haven't any letters, Mr. Visigoth, I'm going. I--" "No," he said, closing his hand over hers. "Don't." "You force me." "Nonsense! Haven't I promised to let you be, Lilly? I've respected that promise to the letter, as I always respect a promise. The past is dead, it died with that night. I swear it over again." "Dead, with your reminding me with every word you utter--every look." "Nonsense, I tell you! I've treated you like everyone else in this office. Made things easy for you. Helped you."