4

It was Mr Boice's fixed habit to go on, toward noon, to the post-office. Instead, to-day, he returned to the Voice office.

He seated himself at his desk for a quarter of an hour, doing nothing. He had the faculty of sitting still, ruminating.

Finally he reached out for the two-foot rule that always lay on his desk, and carefully measured a certain article in last week's paper. Then did a little figuring.

He rose, moved toward the door; turned, and remarked to the wondering Humphrey:—

'Take fifteen inches off Henry's string this week, Weaver. A dollar 'n' five cents. Be at the post-office if anybody wants me.' And went out.

Humphrey himself measured Henry's article on the musicale. Old Boice had been accurate enough; it came to an even fifteen inches. Which at seven cents an inch, would be a dollar and five cents.

When Henry reappeared and together they set out for Lower Chestnut Avenue, Humphrey found he hadn't the heart to break this fresh disappointment to his friend. He decided to let it drift until the Saturday. Something might turn up.

Henry's mood had changed. He had left the office, an hour earlier, looking like a discouraged boy. Now he was serious, silent, hard to talk to. He seemed three years older. With certain of Henry's rather violently contrasted phases Humphrey was familiar; but he had never seen him look quite like this. Henry was strung up. Plainly. He walked very fast, striding intently forward. At least once in each block he found himself a yard ahead of his companion, checked himself, muttered a few words that sounded vaguely like an apology and then repeated the process.

At Mrs Henderson's Henry was grave and curiously attractive. He had charm, no doubt of it—a sort of charm that women, older women, felt. Mildred Henderson distinctly played up to him. And Corinne, Humphrey noted, watched him now and then; the quietly observant keenness in her big dark eyes masked by her easy, lazy smile.

Toward the close of luncheon Henry's evident inner tension showed signs of taking the form of gaiety. He acted like a young man wholly sure of himself. Humphrey's net impression, after more than a year and a half of close association with the boy, was that he couldn't ever be sure of himself. Not for one minute. Yet, when they threw down their napkins and pushed back their chairs, it was Henry who said, with an apparently easy arrogance back of his grain:—

'Hump, you've got to be going back so soon, we're going to give you and Mildred the living-room. We'll wash the dishes.'

Humphrey noted the quick little snap of amusement in Mrs Henderson's eyes (Henry had not before openly used her first name) and the demure, expressionless look that came over Corinne's face. Neither was displeased.

To Mrs Henderson's, 'You'll do no such thing!' Henry responded smilingly:—

'I won't be contradicted. Not to-day.'

Corinne was still silent. But Mrs Henderson, now frankly amused, asked:—

'Why the to-day, Henry?'

'Oh, I don't know. Just the way I feel,' said he; and ushered her with mock politeness into the front room, then, gallantly, almost nonchalantly, took the elbow of the unresisting Corinne and led her toward the kitchen.

Humphrey lighted a cigarette and watched them go. Then with a slight heightening of his usually sallow colour, followed his hostess into the living-room.

It will be evident to the reader that among these four young persons, rather casually thrown together in the first instance, something of an 'understanding' had grown up.

There had been a furtive delight about their first gathering at Humphrey's rooms, a sense of exciting variety in humdrum village life, the very real and lively pleasure of exploring fresh personalities.

Of late years, looking back, it has seemed to me that Mildred Henderson never really belonged in Sunbury, where a woman's whole duty lay in keeping house economically and as pleasantly as might be for the husband who spent his days in Chicago. And in bearing and rearing his children. I never knew anything of her earlier life, before Arthur V. Henderson brought her to the modest house on Chestnut Avenue. I never could figure why she married him at all. Marriages are made in so many places besides Heaven! He used to like to hear her play.

In those days, and a little later, I judged her much as the village judged her—peering out at her through the gun-ports in the armour plate of self-righteousness that is the strong defence of every suburban community. But now I feel that her real mistake lay in waiting so long before drifting to her proper environment in New York. Like all of us, she had, sooner or later, to work out her life in its own terms or die alive of an atrophied spirit. She had gifts, and needed, doubtless, to express them. I can see her now as she was in Sunbury during those years—little, trim, slim, with a quick alert smile and snappy eyes. Not a beautiful woman, perhaps not even an out-and-out pretty one, but curiously attractive. She had much of what men call 'personality.' And she was efficient, in her own way. She never let her musical gift rust; practised every day of her life, I think. Including Sundays. Which was one of the things Sunbury held against her.

Humphrey, too, was using Sunbury as little more than a stop gap. We knew that sooner or later he would strike his gait as an inventor. He was quiet about it. Much thought, deep plans, lay back of that long wrinkly face. While he kept at it he was a conscientious country editor. But his heart was in his library of technical books, and in his workshop in the old Parmenter barn. He must have put just about all of his little inheritance into the place.

Corinne Doag was distinctly a city person. And she was a real singer, with ambition and a firm, even hard purpose, I can see now, back of the languorous dusky eyes and the wide slow smile that Henry was not then man enough to understand. In those days, more than in the present, a girl with a strong sense of identity was taught to hide it scrupulously. It was still the century of Queen Victoria. The life of any live girl had to be a rather elaborate pretence of something it distinctly was not. For which we, looking back, can hardly blame her. Besides, Corinne was young, healthy, glowing with a quietly exuberant sense of life. I imagine she found a sort of pure joy, an animal joy, in playing with men and life. She wasn't dishonest. She certainly liked Henry. Particularly to-day. But this was the summer time. She was playing. And she liked to be, thrilled.

An hour later, could Humphrey have glanced into the butler's pantry, he would have concluded that he knew Henry Calverly not at all. And Miss Wombast, could she have looked in, would have been thrilled and frightened, perhaps to the point of never speaking to Henry again. And of never, never forgetting him.

As the scene has a bearing on the later events of the day, we will take a look.

They stood in the butler's pantry, Henry and Corinne. The shards of a shattered coffee cup lay unobserved at their feet. Out in the kitchen sink all the silver and the other cups and saucers lay in the rinsing rack, the soapsuds dry on them. Henry held Corinne in his arms.

'Henry,' she whispered, 'we must finish the dishes! What on earth will Mildred think?'

'Let her think!' said Henry.

Corinne leaned back against the shelves, disengaged her hands long enough to smooth her flying blue-black hair.

'Henry, I never thought——'

'Never thought what?'

'Wait! My hair's all down again. They might come out here. I mean you seemed——'

'How did I seem? Say it!'

'Oh well—Henry!—I mean sort of—well, reserved. I thought you were shy.'

'Think so now!'

'I—well, no. Not exactly. Wait now, you silly boy! Really, Henry, you musn't be so—so intense.'

'But I am intense. I'm not the way I look. Nobody knows——' Here he interrupted himself.

'Oh, Henry,' she breathed, her head on his shoulder now, her arm clinging about his neck. He felt very manly. Life, real life, whirled, glowed, sparkled about him. He was exultant. 'You dear boy—I'm afraid you've made love to lots of girls.'

'I haven't!' he protested, with unquestionable sincerity. 'Not to lots.'

'Silly!' A silence. Then he felt her draw even closer to him. 'Henry, talk to me! Make love to me! Tell me you'll take me away with you—to-day!—now! Make me feel how wonderful it would be! Say it, anyway—even if—oh, Henry, say it!'

For an instant Henry's mind went cold and clear. He was a little frightened. He found himself wondering if this tempestuous young woman who clung so to him could possibly be the easy, lazy, comfortably smiling Corinne. He thought of Carmen—the Carmen of Calvé. He had suped once in that opera down at the Auditorium. He had paid fifty cents to the supe captain.

The thrill of the conqueror was his. But he was beginning to feel that this was enough, that he had best rest his case, perhaps, at this' point.

As for asking her to fly away with him, he couldn't conscientiously so much as ask her to have dinner with him in Chicago. Not in the present state of his pocket.

One fact, however, emerged. He must propose something. He could at least have it out with old Boice. Settle that salary business. He'd have to.

Another fact is that he was by no means so cool as he, for the moment, fancied himself.

The door from dining-room to kitchen opened, rather slowly. There was a light step in the kitchen, and Mildred Henderson's musical little voice humming the theme of the Andante in the Fifth Symphony.

Henry and Corinne leaped apart. She smoothed her hair again, and patted her cheeks. Then she took a black hair from his shoulder.

They heard Mildred at the sink. Rinsing the dishes and the silver, doubtless.

'Hate to disturb you two,' she called, a reassuring if slightly humorous sympathy in her voice, 'but I promised Humphrey I'd get after you, Henry. He says you simply must get some work done to-day.'

Henry stood motionless, trying to think.'

'Do your work here,' Corinne whispered. 'Stay.'

He shook his head. 'A lot I'd get done—here with you. Now.'

'I'll help you. Couldn't I be just a little inspiration to you?'

'It ain't inspiring work.'

'Henry—write something for me! Write me a poem!

'All right. Not to-day, though. Gotta do this Business Men's Picnic.

Then he said, 'Wait a minute;' went into the kitchen.

'Going over town,' he remarked, offhand, to Mrs Henderson.

At the outer door, Corinne murmured: 'You'll come back, Henry?'

With a vague little wave of one hand, and a perplexed expression, he replied: 'Yes, of course.' And hurried off.