XXXVII

Before the wide-flung window of her attic bedchamber, Sophy Gerard was crouching with her face turned westward. She had abandoned all effort to sleep. The one thought that was beating in her brain was too insistent, too clamorous. Somewhere beyond that tangled mass of chimneys and telegraph-poles, somewhere on the other side of the gray haze which hung about the myriad roofs, John and Louise were working out their destiny, speaking at last the naked truth to each other.

Somehow or other, during those few minutes every thought of herself and her own life seemed to have passed away. John's face seemed always before her—the sudden, hard lines about his mouth; the dull, smoldering pain in his eyes. How would he return? Louise had guarded the secret of her life so well. Would he wrest it from her, or—

She started suddenly back into the room. There was a knocking at the door, something quite different from her landlady's summons. She wrapped her dressing-gown around her, pulled the curtains around the little bed on which she had striven to rest, and moved toward the door. She turned the handle softly.

"Who is that?" she asked.

John almost pushed his way past her. She closed the door with nerveless fingers. Her eyes sought his face, her lips were parted. She clung to the back of the chair.

"You have seen Louise?" she exclaimed breathlessly.

"I have seen Louise," he answered. "It is all over!"

She looked a little helplessly around her. Then she selected the one chair in the tiny apartment that was likely to hold him, and led him to it.

"Please sit down," she begged, "and tell me about it. You mustn't despair like this all at once. I wonder if I could help!"

"No one can help," he told her grimly. "It is all finished and done with. I would rather not talk any more about it. I didn't come here to talk about it. I came to see you. So this is where you live!"

He looked around him, and for a moment he almost forgot the pain which was gnawing at his heart. It was such a simple, plainly furnished little room, so clean, so neat, so pathetically eloquent of poverty. She drew closer together the curtains which concealed her little chintz-covered bed, and came and sat down by his side.

"You know, you are rather a silly person," she whispered soothingly. "Wait for a time and perhaps things will look different. I know that Louise cares. Isn't that the great thing, after all?"

"I would like not to talk about it any more," said John. "Just now I cannot put what I feel into words. What remains is just this: I have been a fool, a sort of Don Quixote, building castles in Spain and believing that real men and women could live in them. I have expected the impossible in life. It is perhaps a good thing that I can see the truth now. I am going to climb down!"

She clasped her hands tighter around his arm. Her eyes sought his anxiously.

"But you mustn't climb down, John," she insisted. "You are so much nicer where you are, so much too good for the silly, ugly things. You must fight this in your own way, fight it according to your own standards. You are too good to come down—"

"Am I too good for you, Sophy?"

She looked at him, and her whole face seemed to soften. The light in her blue eyes was sweet and wistful. A bewildering little smile curled her lips.

"Don't be stupid!" she begged. "A few minutes ago I was looking out of my window and thinking what a poor little morsel of humanity I am, and what a useless, drifting life I have led. But that's foolish. Come now! What I want to persuade you to do is to go back to Cumberland for a time, and try hard—very hard indeed—to realize what it means to be a woman like Louise, with her temperament, her intense intellectual curiosity, her charm. Nothing could make Louise different from what she is—a dear, sweet woman and a great artist. And, John, I believe she loves you!"

His face remained undisturbed even by the flicker of an eyelid.

"Sophy," he said, "I have decided to go abroad. Will you come with me?"

She sat quite still. Again her face was momentarily transformed. All its pallor and fatigue seemed to have vanished. Her head had fallen a little back. She was looking through the ceiling into heaven. Then the light died away almost as quickly as it had come. Her lips shook tremulously.

"You know you don't mean it, John! You wouldn't take me. And if you did, you'd hate me afterward—you'd want to send me back!"

He suddenly drew her to him, his arm went around her waist. She had lost all power of resistance. For the first time in his life of his own deliberate accord, he kissed her—feverishly, almost roughly.

"Sophy," he declared, "I have been a fool! I have come an awful cropper, but you might help me with what's left. I am going to start afresh. I am going to get rid of some of these ideas of mine which have brought me nothing but misery and disappointment. I don't want to live up to them any longer. I want to just forget them. I want to live as other men live—just the simple, ordinary life. Come with me! I'll take you to the places we've talked about together. I am always happy and contented with you. Let's try it!"

Her arms stole around his neck.

"If only you cared, John!" she sobbed.

"But I do," he insisted. "I love to have you with me, I love to see you happy, I shall love to give you pretty things. I shall be proud of you, soothed by you—and rested. What do you say, Sophy?"

"John," she whispered, hiding her face for a moment. "What can I say? What could any poor, weak, little creature like me say? You know I am fond of you—I haven't had the pride, even, to conceal it!"

He stood up, held her face for a moment between his hands, and kissed her forehead.

"Then that's all settled," he declared. "I am going back to my rooms now. I want you to come and dine with me there to-night, at eight o'clock."

Her eyes sought his, pleaded with them, searched them.

"You are sure, John?" she asked, her voice a little broken. "You want me really? I am to come? You won't be sorry—afterward?"

"I am sure," he answered steadfastly. "I shall expect you at eight o'clock!"

John went back to his rooms fighting all the time against a sense of unreality, a sense almost of lost identity. He bought an evening newspaper and read it on the way. He talked to the hall-porter, he talked to a neighbor with whom he ascended in the lift—he did everything except think.

In his rooms he telephoned to the restaurant for a waiter, and with the menu in his hand, a few minutes later, he ordered dinner. Then he glanced at his watch—it was barely seven o'clock. He went down to the barber-shop, was shaved and had his hair cut, encouraging the barber all the time to talk to him. He gave his hands over to a manicure, and did his best to talk nonsense to her. Then he came up-stairs again, changed his clothes with great care, and went into his little sitting room.

It was five minutes to eight, and dinner had been laid at a little round table in the center of the room. There was a bowl of pink roses—Sophy's favorite flower—sent in from the florist's; the table was lighted by a pink-shaded lamp. John went around the room, turning out the other lights, until the apartment was hung with shadows save for the little spot of color in the middle. An unopened bottle of champagne stood in an ice-pail, and two specially prepared cocktails had been placed upon the little side-table. There were no more preparations to be made.

John walked restlessly to the window and gazed at the curving line of lights along the Embankment. This was the end, then—the end of his strenuous days, the end of his ideals, the end of a love-story which had made life for a time seem so wonderful! He could hear them talking about him in a few days' time—the prince's subtle sneer, the jests of his acquaintances. And Louise! His heart stopped for a moment as he tried to think of her face when she heard the news.

He turned impatiently away from the window and glanced at the clock. It was almost eight. He tried to imagine that the bell was ringing, that Sophy was standing there on the threshold in her simple but dainty evening dress, with a little smile parting her lips. The end of it all! He pulled down the blind. No more of the window, no more looking out at the lights, no more living in the clouds! It was time, indeed, that he lived as other men. He lifted one of the glasses to his lips and drained its contents.

Then the bell rang. He moved forward to answer its summons with beating heart. As he opened it, he received a shock. A messenger-boy stood outside. He took the note which the boy handed him and tore it open under the lamp. There were only a few lines:

John, my heart is breaking, but I know you do not mean what you said. I know it was only a moment of madness with you. I know you will love Louise all your life, and will bless me all your life because I am giving up the one thing which could make my life a paradise. I shall be in the train when you read this, on my way to Bath. I have wired my young man, as you call him, to meet me. I am going to ask him to marry me, if he will, next week.

Good-by! I give you no advice. Some day I think that life will right itself with you.

Sophy.

The letter dropped upon the table. John stood for a moment dazed. Suddenly he began to laugh. Then he remembered the messenger-boy, gave him half a crown, and closed the door. He came back into the room and took his place at the table. He looked at the empty chair by his side, looked at the full glass on the sideboard. It seemed to him that he was past all sensations. The waiter came in silently.

"You can serve the dinner," John ordered, shaking out his napkin. "Open the champagne before you go."

"You will be alone, sir?" the man inquired.

"I shall be alone," John answered.