Streets were gilded with sunlight The sky was a smooth shell-like blue, without a cloud. It seemed much more distant than any sky he had seen in London. Over London the sky broods companionably; from London streets, even at their merriest the hint of melancholy is never absent But here, in New York, he was conscious of an invigorating reckless valor, a magnificent and lonely daring. It was every man for himself. There was no friendship between the city and the heavens; as ladders of stone were set up higher against the blue, the heavens receded in challenge.
There was a tang of autumn in the air. Leaves on trees began to have a brittle look. Everything shone: trolley-lines, windows, the slender height of sky-scrapers. It was a wide day—just the day for adventures.
As he passed further uptown, he noticed that people walked more leisurely; men’s faces grew rarer. He had a glimpse of the Park, a green valley of coolness between the quarried, sun-dazzled crags of the metropolis. Presently he turned off to the left, down one of those tunnels hewn between apartment-houses and sacred to the morning promenades of yapping dogs—proud little useless dogs like Twinkles, led on leashes by lately-risen mistresses. Then, in a flash, he saw the Hudson, going from one great quietness to another, sweeping down to the ocean full-bosomed and maternal from its sanctuary in the hills.
The elevator-boy seemed to have been warned of his coming; when he gave his name, he was taken up without suspicious preliminaries.
“Miss Desire hasn’t finished dressing yet,” the maid told, him. “If you’ll wait in here, she’ll be with you presently.”
He was shown into the room in which Vashti had played to him. He hadn’t taken much notice of it on his previous visit Now, as he tiptoed about he saw that it was expressive of its occupants’ personalities. It had a gay, delicate, insubstantial air. It didn’t look lived in. Everything could be packed up within an hour. It wasn’t a home; it was what Vashti had called a “perch.”
The furniture was slight and dainty, as though there for appearance rather than for use. The sofa by the window seemed the only piece meant to be sat on. On the table a dwarf Japanese garden was growing. Beside it lay a copy of Wisdom and Destiny, opened and turned face down. The books within sight were few, for the most part plays and the latest fiction. They were strewn about with a calculated carelessness. On the walls was a water-color of the Grand Canal and another of the Bay of Naples. The rest of the pictures were elaborate photos of actresses, with spidery signatures scrawled across them. One face predominated: the face of a beautiful woman, with a vague smile upon her childish, self-indulgent mouth and a soft mass of hair swathed about her head. She was taken in a variety of poses, but always with the same vague smile and always with her face stooping, as though she were trying to hypnotize the onlooker. One might have supposed that this was the den of a man who was in love with her. Scratched hurriedly in the corner of each of her portraits, prefaced by some extravagant sentiment, was the name “Fluffy.”
On the piano stood the photo of the only man in the collection, signed “To my dearest Girl.”
Teddy paused before it. He recognized the man who had brought Desire home last night—the man who had kept her from him. “To my dearest Girl.” He read and re-read it. Was that the secret of her indifference—that she was in love already? But wouldn’t Vashti have warned him? He stared his defiance. The more inaccessible she became to him, the more he felt the need of her. Something of the valor and bright hardness of the day had entered into his soul. He was like those tall buildings, climbing more recklessly into the blue every time the sky receded from them. He didn’t care who claimed her. He was glad that he would have to fight. She was his by the divine right of the dreamer, and had been his for years. At whatever sacrifice he would win her. Inconsistently, the more difficult she became to him, the more certain he grew of success.
“Hulloa, King Arthur! Getting impatient? I’ll soon be> with you.”