A dreamy smile touched Margaret's lips. "He's perfectly fascinating. I don't wonder women fall for him." She moved toward the door. "I let Nellie go to bed, Gregory, so you put out the lights. And please don't make your usual racket in the morning. I'm all in."
Gregory finished his cigar and then went upstairs. He stopped for a moment in Puck's room as he always did. She was sound asleep. Lady Jane sat stiffly on a chair. Of late, Puck often forgot to take Lady Jane to bed. Puck was growing up. Gregory laid Lady Jane softly on the coverlet and tiptoed out.
Bunched on the dresser was the last mail that he always had sent up from the office when he left too early to get it. He tossed it aside, picked up Jean's with a thrill of pleased surprise, for Jean usually wrote once to his twice and he had not yet answered the last, and made himself comfortable to enjoy it.
Gregory read the letter from the abrupt beginning, "I want to talk to you, dear," to the ending "that's all," and laid it down. There was no haze to be cleared away by a second reading, no doubt of Jean's meaning, no possible misunderstanding. Into the three pages Jean had compressed the wonder of their love, the nuances of its beauty, the impossibility of continuing like this. She made no claims nor recognized any on her own part. Only, she could not go on. She stated it as simply as she might have said: "I cannot meet you to-morrow. I have a meeting."
Before the simplicity of Jean's mind, Gregory was helpless. With one clean blow, Jean had cut away all the elaborate superstructure of ordinary human intercourse. The scaffolding was stark before him.
Step by step, Gregory went back over the past year. There had been hours of longing that not even his work had stilled. Days when Jean had moved beside him, enjoying his triumphs, memories that had helped him through temporary difficulties. She was always there, more or less vivid, according to his need. The visits to New York he had planned weeks ahead. The Christmas dinner he had snatched at the risk of business loss. The perfect walk through the snow to Madam Cateau's; the tenderness of Jean's tears; the gay meal and Jean's cheery smile as the train pulled out; his pride in Jean's courage; desperate moments of his own rebellion, stifled in shame before her greater strength.
And all the time, Jean had been beating against this "ugliness." It had been one thing to him, another to her. He did not know her. Perhaps he had never known her.
He went back to the night he had come in with Puck to find Jean standing by the living-room window, and the storm that had raged in him through that intolerable hour of Margaret's chatter and the need that had driven him to leave the house with Jean. Again Gregory felt the silence of the street about them, then the clatter of the taxi as it stopped at his signal; and the dizzy moment when Jean had said quietly: "Gramercy Park." It was Jean who had said it. Again Gregory felt the reverence and gratitude that had stilled his passion through that dark, silent ride.
Love had meant to her what it had meant to him and he had gloried in her honesty. She had brought back the courage that the weary round of years with Margaret had almost killed, and kept it alive. She had been glad of his success. Again he felt her leaning to him across the table and heard her say:
"It is only eighteen hours away."