"I was only going to eat with Crane. He's been taking the cure again and isn't quite sure of himself. He hates to eat alone. I'll 'phone him and bring some stuff up with me."
Herrick ran whistling down the stairs.
The Kitten was angry and Herrick was very tender. But it couldn't be helped. Crane was his boss and if he would have delirium tremens at inconvenient moments, there was nothing that Herrick could do about it. Herrick was patient. He called her soft love names and promised a week at the Portuguese ranch. The Kitten relented. She was reasonable. She understood. She said low, sweet things that came lightly across the wire and touched Herrick in a caress.
Herrick and Jean got supper together. The strangeness of doing this once familiar thing made them a little shy. They sought for things to say that would not show the realization of this strangeness. The sensation was new and exquisite to Herrick. It was pregnant with possibility. He mashed potatoes vigorously and sensed a possible new relationship waiting beyond the interlude of supper. What it might be he did not know. He did not want to know. He was tired of moods that he understood, reactions that he could bring about at a touch. To-night he had no wish to rouse Jean to the depths of physical passion that had been his aim in the old days when they had gotten supper together. It was not in her, and to-night he did not care. He was weary of storms, smothered at moments beyond endurance by the clinging of The Kitten's arms. He would leave everything to Jean. He would do nothing, lead nowhere, make no effort. He would follow, drugged to a sensuous peace by his own inaction.
When the things were cooked, Herrick laid the cloth at the end of the big table in the studio. He brought up a chair for Jean and with a flourish handed her to it. He was like a boy starting on a new trip, happy and excited. And, as always, Herrick looked the part. His whole body seemed keyed to a greater physical firmness. His eyes had the light that had been in them so often when they used to eat their sandwiches in the rock coves by the sea.
Jean saw and wondered and felt unsure. Was it her own blind, sweeping judgments that had stripped Herrick of all that of which she had once been so sure? To-night he looked and felt as he had on the night he had told her of his lonely boyhood and she had held out her hands to him. Hadn't she changed at all since the days when she and Pat had settled the questions of which they knew nothing? Did she still sit off on her cloud and play her golden flute while people struggled along in the dust below? Did she?
Jean talked of Crane, the pity of his wasted days, while the shuttle of analysis wove back and forth in memory, behind her words. Had she condemned as lack of purpose and sincerity what, after all, might well be a concomitant of that very sweetness and boyishness that had called to her? It was that which had called, Jean was very sure. And the claiming hands that were always trying to hold her, to touch her when she was near, the hunger of Herrick's kiss? It was the groping of a child that didn't want to be alone.
They ate slowly and sat on after the last drop of coffee was drained from the percolator. Herrick had asked Jean about the pamphlet and was helping her with details of publishing and distribution. With a paper and pencil he was making calculations, while Jean leaned across the table, her elbows on the cloth, her chin in her palms. She and Dr. Mary had gone over this ground but she saw instantly that Herrick knew much more about it than they did. It amused Jean, this new humility that met her at every turn to-night.
"I guess there are some things, just a few, that men can do best." And she chuckled in the old, childish way that had always delighted Herrick. It was such a ridiculous, delightful, childish chuckle for a woman of Jean's size. It had always given Herrick in the early days one of those double sensations, two contrasting emotions, that pricked his sense as a pungent spice pricks a jaded palate. It made Jean half woman and half imp.
The pencil quivered a little, but Herrick did not look up. Instinct warned him to go on with the serious business of calculation.