She started slightly and the color rushed to her face. It almost seemed as if he knew something was troubling her.
“Happy, Jeffrey? Yes,” she said, and she went and sat at his feet and folded her hands on his knee.
He looked down into her beautiful face—not into her eyes, for they were downcast.
“Yes,” he said, moodily and absently, as if he were communing with his own thoughts rather than addressing her, “yes, you are happy; how could it be otherwise? All that I have wished for has come to pass. You are a great actress, you will be famous. The world will be at your feet—even as you are now at mine! It will hang upon your voice, watch with breathless interest your face, pour its gold into your lap. Great, famous; you are—you must be—happy!”
“Yes, Jeffrey,” she said, “and I owe it all to you.”
“To me?” he said. “Yes. But if you do, it is a debt that I myself owed. To you, to her——”
“To her?” she murmured, wonderingly.
“To Lucy, to your mother,” he said, still absently.
“To my mother?” said Doris, with bated breath.
He was silent for a moment, then he seemed as if awakening from a dream.