"At the Grand Central, where you will be in about ten minutes—unless you want me to come over."
"No. I'll come down."
Afterwards they laughed, but at the time there had seemed nothing else to say.
Gregory stayed three days. Two of his business appointments and one of Jean's took part of their time, and made it impossible for them to go to Morrison's as Jean had hoped they would be able to do. But she tried not to think of it, and held firmly to what they had.
During these two days the feeling Jean had so often experienced in the past, of having to beat through an outer covering to get at the real Gregory underneath, was gone. At moments, Jean felt as if some subtle atomic process had taken place, regrouping the elements of the man, without changing them in their nature, but re-combining them in such a way that the effect produced was quite different. But it was not a permanent feeling, or rather, it was true only at times. In the close hours of the second afternoon, which they spent at Madam Cateau's, there was no room for analysis in the content that held them, and Jean felt that Gregory had never been away at all. But coming back, he told her of a possible commission, the first that had come through his new connection, and Jean felt the difference again sharply. And simply because it was a change, Jean resented it until her sense of justice and humor conquered. She had always known and believed Gregory had it in him to do big things and now that he was proving it she had a queer feeling of hollowness inside.
"You're going to be disgustingly successful, Gregory. You ooze it already."
"Do you mean that I really act conceited?" He asked it with such desire to be answered honestly that Jean laughed.
"I didn't say that. Of course you don't. But you—let me see how to put it. Here, give me a pencil, maybe I can draw it."
Gregory watched with a grin while Jean constructed figures unknown to geometry.