He sat with his mother’s letter in his hand—the same kind of letter that years ago Mrs. Sheerug must have penned to Hal. If Hal had preserved them, there must be stacks of them stowed away in the garrets at Orchid Lodge. How selfish lovers were in the price they made others pay! What dearly purchased happiness!

And he was becoming like Hal. He resented the comparison; but he was. Fame and opportunity were knocking at his door. Instead of opening to them, he sat weakly waiting for a girl who didn’t seem to care. One day fame and opportunity would go away; when they were gone, he would have lost his only chance of making the girl respond. If he became great—really great—she might appreciate him.

For the first time in his dealings with Desire strategy suggested itself. Not until Fluffy had lost Horace had she discovered that she had a heart. If he were to leave Desire—— Fear gripped him lest, while he was gone, some one else might claim her. The loneliness of what he would have to face appalled him. It was a loneliness which she would share at least in part; the habits formed from having been loved, even though she had not loved in return, might lead her into another man’s arms.

And yet, strategy or no strategy, he would have to leave New York; he couldn’t keep up the pace. The three hundred pounds per annum which had come to him from Beauty Incorporated hadn’t been much; but, while it lasted, it had seemed certain. It had been something to fall back on. It had stood between him and poverty. His nerve was shaken. What if his vein of fancy should run dry?

His habits of industry were already lost. He would have to go into retreat to re-find them—go somewhere where people believed in him; then he might retrieve his confidence. The yearning to be mothered, which the strongest men feel at times, swept over him like a tide. He wanted to hear himself called Teddy, as though his name was not absurd or disgraceful—a name to be avoided with a nickname.

If he appealed to Desire one last time, would she understand—would she be kind to him as she had been to Fluffy? He wondered—and he doubted. If he told her of the loss of the three hundred pounds his trouble would sound paltry. It might sound to her as though he were asking her to restore to him the watch-bracelet. It was in her company that he had spent so riotously; she might think that he was accusing her of having been mercenary. She had never been that; she had given him far more in happiness than the means of happiness had cost But he couldn’t conceive of being in her company and refraining from extravagance. Her personality made recklessness contagious; it acted like strong wine, diminishing both the future and the past, till the present became of total importance.

There was a phrase in his mother’s letter which brought an unreasonable warmth to his heart: “Come back to where we feel so proud of you.” It was a long while since any one had felt proud of him. But how had she guessed that? He had poured out his admiration. He had been so selfless in his adoration that he had sometimes fancied that he had been despised for it. He had almost come to believe that there was an unpleasantness in his appearance or a taint in his character which the love-blind eyes of Eden Row had failed to discover. Desire seemed most conscious of it when he stood in the light. It was only in the dusk of cabs and taxis that she almost forgot it. Sometimes she seemed morbidly aware of this defect; then she would say in a weary little voice, “I don’t feel like kissing to-night.”

Humiliation was enervating his talent. He was losing faith in his own worth—the faith so necessary to an artist. Desire said that it was “soft” of him to want her to be proud of him. Perhaps it was. But if she ought not to be proud of him, who ought?

He would have been content with much less than her pride—if only, when others were present, she had not ignored him. Her friends unconsciously imitated her example. They passed him over and chattered about trifles. Their conversations were a shallow exchange of words in which, when every nerve in his body was emotionalized, it was impossible for him to take part. He showed continually at a disadvantage. They none of them had the curiosity to inquire why he was there or who he was. He felt that behind his back they must smile at Desire’s treatment of him.

It would be good to get back to people who frankly reciprocated his pride—to artist father with his lofty ideals, who went marching through life with all his bands playing, never halting for spurious success to overtake him. It would be good to get back, and yet——

She had worked herself into his blood. She was a disease for which she herself was the only cure. Without the hope of seeing her his future would lose its sight. Up till now the short nightly partings had been agonies, which called for many kisses to dull their pain. When absent from her, he had made haste to sleep, that oblivion might bridge the gulf of separation. To have to face interminable days which would bring no promise of her girlish presence, seemed worse than death. If he returned to England, what certainty would he have that they would ever meet again?

He stung himself into shame by remembering what weakness had done for Hal. Hal would form a link between them, when every other means of communication had failed.

The wildness of his panic abated. He urged himself to be strong. If he went on as he was going now, he would bankrupt his life. To-morrow he would plead with her.

If she still procrastinated, then the only way to draw her nearer would be to go from her. The horror of parting confronted him again. He closed his eyes to shut it out. He would decide nothing to-night.

Next morning he phoned her at the usual time. She was still sleeping; he left a request that she should call him. He waited till twelve. At last he grew impatient and phoned her again. He was told that she had gone out with Fluffy, leaving word that he would hear from her later. By three o’clock he had not heard. All day he had been kept at high tension on the listen. The cavalierness of her conduct roused his indignation. Her punishment was out of all proportion to his offense, especially after the way in which she had received the watch-bracelet A month ago he would have hurried out to send her a peace-offering of flowers. To-day he hurried out on a different errand.

Jumping on a bus, he rode up Fifth Avenue and alighted at The International Sleeping Car Company. Entering swiftly, for fear his resolution should forsake him, he booked a berth on the Mauretania, sailing on Christmas Eve, the next night. He hesitated as to whether he should send his mother a cable; he determined to postpone that final step. He had booked and canceled a berth before. He tried to believe that he was no more serious now than on that occasion. He was only proving to himself and to her his supreme earnestness. ‘If she gave him any encouragement, even though she didn’t definitely promise to marry him, he would postpone his sailing.

He wandered out into the streets. Floating like gold and silver tulips on the dusk, lights had sprung up. Crowds surged by merrily; all their talk was of Christmas. The look of Christmas was in their faces. Girls hung on the arms of men. Everywhere he saw lovers: they swayed along the pavement as though they were one; they snuggled in hansoms, sitting close together; they fled by in taxis, wraithlike in the darkness, fleeting as the emotion they expressed. He knew all their secrets, all their thoughts: how men’s hands groped into muffs to squeeze slender fingers; how the fingers lay quiet, pretending they were numb; how speech became incoherent, and faces drooped together. He listened to the lisp of footsteps—all going somewhere to sorrow or happiness. How many lovers would meet in New York to-night! He felt stunned. His heart ached intolerably.

In sheer aimlessness he strolled into the Waldorf and hovered by the pillar from which he had so often watched to see her come. To see her approaching now he would give a year of his life. She would be wearing her white-fox furs and the little tweed suit he had given her. The fur rubbed off on his sleeves; it told many tales.

His resolution was weakening every minute; soon it would be impossible to leave her—even to pretend he had thought of leaving her.

He must keep his mind occupied; must go to some place which held no associations. Sauntering along Thirty-fourth Street, he passed by the Beauty Parlor where she went, as she said, “to be glorified.” He passed the shop to which he had gone with her to buy the earliest of his more personal gifts, the dozen silk stockings. Foolish recollections, full of poignancy! He crossed Broadway beneath the crashing Elevated. Gimbel’s at least would leave him unreminded; she despised any store which was not on Fifth Avenue. He had drifted through several departments, when he was startled by a voice. He turned as though he had been struck. A salesman, demonstrating a gramophone, had chosen the record of Absent for the purpose. He stood tensely, listening to the tenor wail that came from the impersonal instrument:


“Thinking I see you—thinking I see you smile.”


It was the last straw. His pride was broken. What did it matter whether she cared? The terrible reality was his need of her. He made a dash for the nearest pay-station and rang her up.

A man answered. He wasn’t Mr. Dak. “Who? Mr. Gurney? Hold the line. I’ll call her.—— Little D., here’s your latest. Hurry!”

He heard Desire’s tripping footsteps in the passage and her reproving whisper to her companion, “You had no right to do that.” Then her clear voice, thrilling him even at that distance: “Hulloa, Bright Eyes! I’ve just this minute got home. Did you get my wire?—You didn’t! But you must have. I sent it after you left last night.—Humph! That’s what comes of staying at these cheap hotels. You’d better ask the clerk at the desk.—Oh, you’re not at the Brevoort. At Gimbel’s! What are you doing there? Buying me another watch-bracelet? Never mind, tell me presently.—No, I’m not going to tell you what was in the telegram.—What’s that?”

He had asked who was with her.

“Naturally I can’t answer,” she said; “not now—later. You understand why.—Of course you can come. Hurry! I’m dying to see you. By-by.”

He had been conscious, while she was speaking, that her conversation was framed quite as much for the other man’s mystification as for his own. There had been a tantalizing remoteness in her tones. But what man had the privilege to call her “Little D.”? He remembered now that, when he had done it, an annoyed look of remembrance had crept into her eyes.

Life had become worth living again. The madness was on him to spend, to be gay, to atone. On his way uptown he went into Maillard’s to buy her a box of her favorite caramels. He stopped at Thorley’s and purchased a corsage of orchids. He was allowing her to twist him round her little finger. He confessed it. But what did anything matter? He was going to her. Life had become radiantly happy. He no longer had to eye passing lovers with envy. He was of their company and glorified.

When he had pressed the button of the apartment, he was kept waiting—kept waiting so long that he rang twice. On the other side Twinkles was barking furiously; then he heard the soft swish of approaching garments. The door opened. Through the crack he could just make out her face.

“Don’t come in till I hide,” she warned him in a whisper. “Every one’s out, except me and Twinkles. I’m halfway through dressing.” She retreated, leaving the door ajar. When she had fled across the hall into the passage, she called to him, “You may enter.”

He closed the door and listened in the discreet silence. She was in her bedroom. She had made a great secret of her little nest. She had told him about the pictures on the walls, the Japanese garden in the window, and the queer things she saw from the window when she spied across the air-shaft on her neighbors. She had a child’s genius for disguising the commonplace with glamour. Of this the name she had given him, which was known to no one but her and himself, was an example. She made every hour that he had not shared with her bristle with mysteries by sly allusions to what had happened in it Her bedroom was a forbidden spot; she deigned to describe it to him and left his imagination to do the rest. In his lover’s craving to picture her in all her environments—to be in ignorance of nothing that concerned her—he had often begged her to let him peep across the threshold. She had invariably denied him, putting on her most shocked expression.

He walked into the front-room; it was littered with presents, received and to be given, and their torn wrappings.

She heard him. “You mustn’t go in there,” she called.

“Then where am I to go?”

“Bother. I don’t know. You can stand in the passage and talk to me if you like.”

For a quarter of an hour he leant against the wall, facing her closed door. While they exchanged remarks he judged her progress by sounds. Sometimes she informed him as to their meaning. “It’s my powder-box that I’m opening now.—What you heard then was the stopper of my Mary Garden bottle.—Shan’t be long. Why don’t you smoke?”

He didn’t want to smoke, but when she asked him a second time, her question had become an imperative.

Her voice reached him muffled; by the rustling she must be slipping on her skirt. “I’m keeping you an awfully long while, Meester Deek; you’re very patient.” There was a lengthy pause. Then: “Of course it isn’t done in the best families, but we’re different and, anyhow, nobody’ll know. I’ve drawn down the shades.—If you promise to be good, you can come inside.”

She was seated at her dressing-table before the mirror, adjusting her broad-brimmed velvet hat.

“Hulloa!” She did not turn, but let her reflection do the welcoming. “I haven’t allowed many gentlemen to come in here.” She seemed to be saying it lest he should think himself too highly flattered.

He bent across her shoulder, asking permission by his silence.

“You may take a nice Christmas kiss, if that’s what you’re after. Just one.”

He brushed her cool cheek, the unresponsive cheek of an obedient child. Her arms curved up to her head like the fine handles of a fragile vase. She proceeded quietly with the pinning of her hat. His arms went about her passionately. His action was unplanned. He was on his knees beside her, clutching her to him and kissing the hands which strove to push him from her. When his lips sought hers, she turned her face aside so that he could only reach the merest corner of her mouth. So she lay for some seconds, her face averted, till her motionlessness had quelled his emotion.

She laughed, freeing herself from his embrace. “Oh, Meester Deek,” she whispered softly, “and when I wasn’t wearing any corsets! Now let me go on with the pinning of my hat.”

He filled in the awkward silence by placing the corsage of orchids in her lap. Before she thanked him, she tried them at various angles against her breast, studying their effect in the mirror. Then she whispered reproachfully:

“Aren’t you extravagant? Money does burn holes in your pocket. You ought to give it to some one to take care of for you.”

There was no free chair. The room was strewn with odds and ends of clothing as though a cyclone had blown through it He seated himself on the edge of the white bed and glanced about him. On the dressing-table in a silver frame was a photograph of Tom. On the wall, in a line above the bed, were four more of him. Vaguely he began to guess why she had made such a secret of her bedroom, and why she had let him see it at this stage in his courtship. Jealousy smoldered like a sullen spark; it sprang into a flame which tortured and consumed him.

What right had this man to watch her? Why should she wish to have him watch?

He threw contempt on his jealousy. It made him feel brutal. But it had burnt long enough to harden his resolve.

She rose and picked up her jacket. “D’you want to help me?”

He took it from her without alacrity. As he guided her arms into the sleeves, she murmured: “Why were you so naughty last night, Meester Deek? You almost made me cross, I was so upset and tired. You weren’t kind.” Then, with a flickering uplifting of her lashes, “But I’m not tired any longer.”

She waited expectant. Nothing happened. She picked up a hand-mirror, surveying the back of her neck and giving her rebellious little curl a final pat, as though bidding it be careful of its manners. In laying it down she contrived to hold the glass so as to get a glimpse of his face across her shoulder. Her expression stiffened. As if he were not there, she swept over to the door, switched off the light and left him to follow.

He found her in the front-room. She had unwrapped a pot of azaleas and was clearing a space to set it on the table.

“Tom brought me this,” she explained in a preoccupied tone. “He was waiting for me when I got back. It was Tom who answered the phone when you called me. Kind of him to remember me, wasn’t it?”

“Very kind.”

“You don’t need to agree if you don’t really think so.” She spoke petulantly, with her back toward him. “Even a plant means a lot to some people. Tom’s only an actor. He’s not a rich author to whom money means nothing.”

“And I’m not.”

“Well, you act like it.”

She had found that the bottom of the pot was wet and walked out of the room to fetch a plate before setting it on the table. While she was gone, he groped after the deep-down cause of her annoyance.

“Did you really send me a telegram?” he asked the moment she reentered.

“You’ve never caught me fibbing yet. I’ve been careful. Why d’you doubt it?”

“I thought you might have said it—well, just for something to say. Perhaps because you were embarrassed, or to make Tom jealous.”

“Embarrassed! Why embarrassed? Tom’s an old friend. I must say you have a high opinion of me. It strikes me Mrs. Theodore Gurney’s going to have a rough time.”

There was a dead silence. She pivoted slowly and captured both his hands. Dragging him to the couch, she made him sit beside her. In the sudden transition of her moods, her face had become as young and mischievous with smiles as before it had been elderly and cross.

“Well, Meester Deek, haven’t you anything to say? Don’t you like me better now?” She dived to within an inch of his face as though she were about to kiss him, and there stopped short, laughing into his eyes. When he made no response, she became tensely grave. “I can be a little cat sometimes, and yet you want to live with me all your life. I should think you’d get sick of me. I’m very honest to let you see what I really am.” She said this with a wise shake of her head and an air of self-congratulation. “But you’re a beast, too, when you’re offended.” She stooped and kissed his hand. “The first time I’ve ever done that,” she murmured, “to you or any man. Haven’t we gone far enough with our quarreling?”

“I think we have.”

“But you’ve not forgiven me?—Well, I’ll tell you, and then you’ll ask my pardon.” She moved away from him to the other end of the couch. “I’ve really been very sweet to you all the time and you haven’t known it. Last night we were both stupid; I was upset. I don’t know which of us was the worst. But after you’d gone I was sorry, and I dressed, and I went out all alone at midnight to send you a telegram so you’d know that I was sorry directly you woke in the morning. It wasn’t my fault that you didn’t get it. And then about to-day—you’re angry because I didn’t call you up. It was because I was looking after your Christmas present. And when you came here all glum and sulky I let you see my bedroom. And now I’ve kissed your hand. Isn’t that enough?”

She was turning all the tables on him. “Let’s be friends,” he said. When he slipped his arm about her, she flinched. “Mind my flowers. Don’t crush them. You must first say that you’re sorry.”

“I’m sorry. Terribly sorry.”

“All right, then. But you did hurt me last night when—when you went away like that.”

“But you often let me go away like that.”

She held up a finger. “You’re starting again.”

She rose and walked over to a pile of parcels which were lying on the piano. As he watched her, the thought of Tom came back. She hadn’t explained those photographs; his pride wouldn’t permit him to ask her.

“You’re not very curious, Meester Deek. Why d’you think I kept you waiting in the passage and wouldn’t let you come in here? I was afraid you might see something. I’ll let you see it now.”

She was leaning against the piano. He went and stood beside her. She moved nearer so that her hair swept his cheek like a caress. “Do you like it?” She placed a miniature of herself done on ivory in his hand. “Better than the poor little tin-type portrait that faded!”

“For me?” he asked incredulously.

“Who else? No, listen before you thank me. I thought they’d never get it done. They’ve been weeks over it. All day I’ve been hurrying them. Now, won’t you own that you have been misunderstanding?”

“I’ve been an unjust idiot.”

“Not so bad as that. And I’m not so bad, either, if you only knew—— Now I’ll put on your bracelet Did you notice that I wasn’t wearing it?”

“Why weren’t you?”

The babies came into her eyes. “You’ve had a narrow escape. If you hadn’t been nice, I was going to have given it back to you. Let’s fetch it. You can fasten it on for me.”

From the steps of the apartment-house they hailed a hansom, and drove through the winking night to the Claremont. “‘So, honey, jest play in your own backyard,” she sang. When she found that she couldn’t intimidate him, she started on another fragment, filling in the gaps with humming when she forgot the words:


“Oh, you beautiful girl,

What a beautiful girl you are!

You’ve made my dreams come true to me——”


“Sounds as though I were praising myself, doesn’t it? Don’t come so near, Meester Deek; every time you hug me you carry away so much of my little white foxes. ‘Beware of the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the something or other.’ Didn’t some one once say that? I wish you’d beware; soon there won’t be any fur left.”

While she went to the lady’s room to see whether her appearance had suffered under his kisses, he engaged a table in a corner, overlooking the Hudson.

Towards the end of the meal, when she was finishing an ice and he was lighting a cigar, a silence fell between them. She sat back with her eyes partly closed and her body relaxed. Up to that moment she had been daringly vivacious. He had learnt to fear her high spirits and fits of niceness. They came in gusts; they always had to be paid for with periods of languor.

“What are you thinking?” he asked. “Something sad, I’ll warrant.”

“Fluffy.” She glanced across at him, appealing for his patience.

“How is she?” He tried to humor her with a display of interest

“She’s broken up. She’s been speaking to Simon Freelevy. She absolutely refuses to go on playing in New York; it’s too full of memories. So it’s all arranged; she’s going to California in the New Year with a road-company.”

He understood her depression now. If Fluffy was leaving New York, this was his chance. Somehow or other he must manage to hang on. He was glad he had not sent that cable to his mother.

“That’s hard lines on you.” He sank his voice sympathetically. “You’ll miss her awfully.”

Desire woke up and became busy with what remained of her ice. “I shan’t. She wants me to go with her. It’ll do me good.” Then coaxingly, as though she were asking his permission, “I’ve never been to California.”

The heat drained from him. He paused, giving himself time to grow steady. If he counted for so little, she shouldn’t guess his bitter disappointment. “But will you leave your mother? I should think she’ll be frightfully lonely.”

“My beautiful mother’s so unselfish.”

“But——”

“Well?”

They gazed at each other. He wondered whether she was only playing with him—whether she had only said it that he might amuse her with a storm of protests.

“You were going to ask about yourself?” she suggested. “I’ve thought all that out. You and mother can come and join us somewhere. There’s splendid riding out West. I’ve always wanted to ride. It would be fine to go flying along together if—if you were there.”

He didn’t understand this girl, who could give him ivory miniatures one minute and propose to go away for months the next—who, while she refused to become anything to him, undertook to arrange his life.

He laughed tolerantly. “I’m afraid that can’t be. I shouldn’t accomplish much by tagging after a road-company all across a continent. You don’t seem to realize that I have a living to earn.”

“That was a nasty laugh,” she pouted; “I didn’t like it one little bit.”

She played with his fingers idly, lifting them up and letting them fall, like soldiers marking time. “You manicure them now. You’ve learnt something by coming to America—— Your living!” She smiled. “It seems to come easily enough. I hear you talk about it, but I never see you working.”

Here was the opening for which he had been waiting. “You&r............