XXXII

John went back to town, telling himself that all had gone as well as he had expected. He had done his duty. He had told Stephen his news, and they had parted friends. Yet all the time he was conscious of an undercurrent of disconcerting thoughts.

Louise met him at the station, and he fancied that her expression, too, although she welcomed him gaily enough, was a little anxious.

"Well?" she asked, as she took his arm and led him to where her motor-car was waiting. "What did that terrible brother of yours say?"

John made a little grimace.

"It might have been worse," he declared. "Stephen wasn't pleased, of course. He hates women like poison, and he always will. That is because he doesn't know very much about them, and because he will insist upon dwelling upon certain unhappy incidents of our family history."

"I shall never forget the morning he came to call on me," Louise sighed. "He threatened all sorts of terrible things if I did not give you up."

"Why didn't you tell me about it?" John asked.

"I thought it might worry you," she replied, "and it couldn't do any good. He believed he was doing his duty. John, you are sure about yourself, aren't you?"

"Come and have tea with me in my rooms, and I'll tell you," he laughed.

"Just what I'd planned to do," she assented, with a sigh of content. "It's too late to go home and get back to the theater comfortably."

"The theater!" John murmured, a few minutes later, when they were seated in his comfortable little sitting room and he had ordered tea. "Do you know that I grudge those three or four hours of your day?"

"I believe I do, too," she admitted; "and yet a little while ago it was my only pleasure in life. Don't sit over there, please! You are much too far away. Closer still! Let me feel your arms. You are strong and brave, aren't you, John? You would not let any one take me away from you?"

He was a little startled by the earnestness of her words. She seemed pale and fragile, her eyes larger and deeper than usual, and her mouth tremulous. She was like a child with the shadow of some fear hanging over her. He laughed and held her tightly to him.

"There is nothing that could take you away—you know that quite well! There is nobody in the world whom you need fear for a single moment. If you have troubles, I am here to share them. If you have enemies, you can leave me to dispose of them."

"I think," she murmured, "that I am in an emotional frame of mind to-day. I am not often like this, you know. I woke this morning feeling so happy; and then, all of a sudden, I couldn't somehow believe in it—in myself. I felt it slip away. You won't let it slip away, John?"

"Never a chance!" he promised confidently. "Look at me. Do I seem like a person to be easily got rid of? What you need is a holiday, and you need it badly. We haven't made any plans yet, have we? I wonder whether we could break your contract at the theater!"

"We must talk to Graillot," she said. "There is a little Frenchwoman over here now. I once saw her act in Paris, and I am sure she could play Thérèse wonderfully. But don't let's talk seriously any longer. Just let us sit here and talk nonsense!"

"Have you told any of your friends yet, Louise—the prince, for instance?"

He had asked this question on his way across the room to ring the bell. There was no reply, and when he turned around, a moment or two later, he was almost frightened. Louise was sitting quite still, but the color seemed to have been drained from her cheeks. Her eyes were filled with some expression which he did not wholly understand. He only knew that they were calling him to her side, and he promptly obeyed the summons. Her head fell upon his shoulder, her arms were locked about his neck.

"John," she sobbed, "I do not know what is the matter with me. I am hysterical. Don't ask me any questions. Don't talk to me. Hold me like you are doing now, and listen. I love you, John—do you understand?—I love you!"

Her lips sought his and clung to them. A queer little wave of passion seemed to have seized her. Half crying, half laughing, she pressed her face against his. "I do not want to act to-night. I do not want to play, even to the most wonderful audience in the world. I do not want to shake hands with many hundreds of people at that hateful reception. I think I want nothing else in the world but you!"

She lay, for a moment, passive in his arms. He smoothed her hair and kissed her tenderly. Then he led her back to her place upon the couch. Her emotional mood, while it flattered him in a sense, did nothing to quiet the little demons of unrest that pulled, every now and then, at his heart-strings.

"What is this reception?" he asked.

She made a little grimace.

"It is a formal welcome from the English stage to the French company that has come over to play at the new French theater," she told him. "Sir Edward and I are to receive them. You will come, will you not?"

"I haven't an invitation," he told her.

"Invitation? I invite you. I am the hostess of the evening."

"Then I am not likely to refuse, am I?" he asked, smiling. "Shall I come to the theater?"

"Come straight to the reception at the Whitehall Rooms," she begged. "Sir Edward is calling for me, and Graillot will go down with us. Later, if you care to, you can drive me home."

"Don't you think," he suggested, "that it would be rather a good opportunity to announce our engagement?"

"Not to-night!" she pleaded. "You know, I cannot seem to believe it myself except when I am with you and we are alone. It seems too wonderful after all these years. Do you know, John, that I am nearly thirty?"

He laughed.

"How pathetic! All the more reason, I should say, why we should let people know about it as soon as possible."

"There is no particular hurry," she said, a little nervously. "Let me get used to it myself. I don't think you will have to wait long. Everything I have been used to doing and thinking seems to be crumbling up around me. Last night I even hated my work, or at least part of it."

His eyes lit up with genuine pleasure.

"I can't tell you how glad I am to hear you say that," he declared. "I don't hate your work—I've got over that. I don't think I am narrow about it. I admire Graillot, and his play is wonderful. But I think, and I always shall think, that the dénouement in that third act is damnable!"

She nodded understandingly.

"I am beginning to realize how you must feel," she confessed. "We won't talk about it any more now. Drive me to the theater, will you? I want to be there early to-night, just to get everything ready for changing afterward."

The telephone-bell rang as they were leaving the room. John put the receiver to his ear and a moment later held it away.

"It is Sophy," he announced. "Shall I tell them to send her up?"

"Sophy, indeed!" Louise exclaimed. "I thought she was in the country, on tour, and was not expected back until to-morrow."

"I thought she went away for a week," John said, "but there she is, waiting down-stairs."

Louise hesitated for a moment. Then she came over to John with a tremulous little smile at the corners of her lips.

"Dear," she said, "I am in a strange frame of mind to-day. I don't want even to see Sophy. Tell them to send her up here. She can wait for you while you take me out the other way."

"May I tell her?" John asked, as he rang for the lift. "She has been such a good little pal!"

Once more Louise seemed to hesitate. A vague look of trouble clouded her face.

"Perhaps you had better, dear," she agreed spiritlessly. "Only tell her not to breathe it to another soul. It is to be our secret for a little time—not long—just a day or two longer."

The gates of the lift swung open, and John raised her fingers to his lips.

"It is for you to say, dear," he promised.

When he came back to his room, Sophy was curled up on the couch with a cigarette between her lips. She looked at him severely.

"I am losing faith in you," she declared. "There are signs of a hurried departure from this room. There is a distinct perfume of roses about the place. You have always told me that I am the only visitor of my sex you allow here. I am fiercely jealous! Tell me what this tea-tray and the empty cups mean?"

"It means Louise," he answered, smiling. "She has just this moment gone away."

Sophy sighed with an air of mock relief.

"Louise I suppose I must tolerate," she said. "Fancy her coming here to tea with you, though!"

"I have been up to Cumberland for a day," he told her, "and Louise came to meet me at the station."

"How is your angel brother?" she asked. "Did he ask after me?"

"He did mention you," John confessed. "I don't remember any direct message, though. You want a cocktail, of course, don't you?"

"Dying for it," she admitted. "I have had such a dull week! We've been playing in wretched little places, and last night the show went bust. The manager presented us with our fares home this morning. We were only down in Surrey, so here I am."

"Well, I'm glad to see you back again," John told her, after he had ordered the cocktails. "Louise has been quite lost without you, too."

"I didn't want to go away," she sighed, "but I do get so tired of not working! Although my part wasn't worth anything, I hated it being cut out. It makes one feel so aimless. One has too much time to think."

He laughed at her, pleasantly but derisively.

"Time to think!" he repeated. "Why, I have never seen you serious for five minutes in your life, except when you've been adding up Louise's housekeeping-books!"

She threw her cigarette into the grate, swung round toward him, and looked steadily into his face.

"Haven't you?" she said. "I can be. I often am. It isn't my correct pose, though. People don't like me serious. If they take me out or entertain me, they think they are being cheated if I am not continually gay. You see what it is to have a reputation for being amusing! Louise keeps me by her side to talk nonsense to her, to keep her from being depressed. Men take me out because I am bright, because I save them the trouble of talking, and they don't feel quite so stupid with me as with another woman. My young man at Bath wants to marry me for the same reason. He thinks it would be so pleasant to have me always at hand to chatter nonsense. That is why you like me, too. You have been pitched into a strange world. You are not really in touch with it. You like to be with some one who will talk nonsense and take you a little way out of it. I am just a little fool, you see, a harmless little creature in cap and bells whom every one amuses himself with."

John stared at her for a moment, only half understanding.

"Why, little girl," he exclaimed, "I believe you're in earnest!"

"I am in deadly earnest," she assured him, her voice breaking a little. "Don't take any notice of me. I have had a wretched week, and it's a rotten world, anyway."

There was a knock at the door, and the waiter entered with the cocktails.

"Come," John said, as he took one from the tray, "I will tell you some news that will give you something to think about. I hope that you will be glad—I feel sure that you will. I want you to be the first to drink our healths—Louise's and mine!"

The glass slipped through her fingers and fell upon the carpet. She never uttered even an exclamation. John was upon his knees, picking up the broken glass.

"My fault," he insisted. "I am so sorry, Sophy. I am afraid some of the stuff has gone on your frock. Looks as if you'll have to take me out shopping. I'll ring for another cocktail."

He rose to his feet and stepped toward the bell. Then it suddenly occurred to him that as yet she had not spoken. He turned quickly around.

"Sophy," he exclaimed, "what is the matter? Aren't you going to congratulate me?"

She was sitting bolt upright upon the couch, her fingers buried in the cushions, her eyes closed. He moved quickly across toward her.

"I say, Sophy, what's wrong?" he asked hastily. "Aren't you well?"

She waved him away.

"Don't touch me," she begged. "I went without my lunch—nearly missed the train, as it was. I was feeling a little queer when I came, and dropping that glass gave me a shock. Let me drink yours, may I?"

He handed it to her, and she drained its contents. Then she smiled up at him weakly.

"What a shame!" she said. "Just as you were telling me your wonderful news! I can scarcely believe it—you and Louise!"

John sat down beside her.

"Louise does not want it talked about for a day or two," he observed. "We have not made any plans yet."

"Is Louise going to remain upon the stage?"

"Probably, if she wishes it," he replied; "but I want to travel first for a year or so, before we settle definitely upon anything. I did not think that you would be so much surprised, Sophy."

"Perhaps I am not really," she admitted. "One thinks of a thing as being possible, for a long time, and when it actually comes—well, it takes you off your feet just the same. You know," she added slowly, "there are no two people in this world so far apart in their ways as you and Louise."

"That is true from one point of view," he confessed. "From another, I think that there are no two people so close together. Of course, it seems wonderful to me, and I suppose it does to you, Sophy, that she should care for a man of my type. She is so brilliant and so talented, such a woman of this latter-day world, the world of which I am about as ignorant as a man can be. Perhaps, after all, that is the real explanation of it. Each of us represents things new to the other."

"Did you say that no one has been told yet—no one at all?"

"No one except Stephen," John assented. "That is why I went up to Cumberland, to tell him."

"You have not told the prince?" Sophy asked, dropping her voice a little. "Louise has not told him?"

"Not that I know of. Why do you ask?" John inquired, looking into Sophy's face.

"I don't know," she answered. "It just occurred to me. He and Louise have known each other for such a long time, and I wondered what he might have to say about it."

John laid his hands upon the poisonous thoughts that had stolen once more into his blood, and told himself that he had strangled them. He swept them away and glanced at his watch.

"Let's have some dinner before I change, down in the grill-room—in a quarter of an hour's time, say. I don't want to be at the theater before the second act."

Sophy hesitated. There was a hard feeling in her throat, a burning at the back of her eyes. She was passionately anxious to be alone, yet she could not bring herself to refuse. She could not deny herself, or tear herself at once away from the close companionship which seemed, somehow or other, to have crept up between herself and John, and to have become the one thing that counted in life.

"I'd love to," she said, "but remember I've been traveling. Look at me! I must either go home, or you must let me go into your room—"

"Make yourself at home," John invited. "I have three letters to write, and some telephone messages to answer."

Sophy lit another cigarette and strolled jauntily through his suite of rooms. When she was quite sure that she was alone, however, she closed the door behind her, dropped her cigarette, and staggered to the window. She stood there, gazing down into an alleyway six stories below, where the people passing back and forth looked like dwarf creatures.

One little movement forward! No one could have been meant to bear pain like this. She set her teeth.

"It would be so soon over!"

Then she suddenly found that she could see nothing; the people below were blurred images. A rush of relief had come to her. She sank into the nearest chair and sobbed.