Thus ends my experience as a motor maid!
What was going to become of me I didn't know, but while I was jamming in hatpins and praying for ideas, there came a knock at the door. A pencilled note from the late chauffeur, signed hastily, "Yours ever, J.D.," and inviting me down to the couriers' dining-room for a conference. There would be no one there but ourselves at this hour, he said, and we should be able to talk over our plans in peace.
What a place to say farewell forever to the only man I ever had, could or would love—a couriers' dining room, with grease spots on the tablecloth! However, there was no help for it, since I was facing the world with fifty francs, and could not afford to pay for a romantic background.
After all that had happened, and especially after certain impertinent references made to our private affairs, I felt a new and very embarrassing shyness in meeting the man with whom I'd been playing that pleasant little game called "brother and sister." He was waiting for me in the couriers' room, which was even dingier and had more grease spots than I had fancied, and I hurried into speech to cover my nervousness.
"I don't know how I'm going to thank you for all you've done for me," I stammered. "That horrible Bertie—"
"Let's not talk of him," said Jack. "Put him out of your mind for ever. He has no place there, or in your life—and no more have any of the incidents that led up to him. You've had a very bad time of it, poor little girl, and now—"
"Oh, I haven't," I exclaimed. "I've been happier than ever before in my life. That is—I—it was all so novel, and like a play—"
"Well, now the play's over," Jack broke in, pitying my evident embarrassment. "I wanted to ask you if you'd let me advise and perhaps help you. We have been brother and sister, you know. Nothing can take that away from us."
"No," said I, in a queer little voice. "Nothing can."