As he left, the last sight he had of her she was still sitting curled up on the couch, in her pale-blue peignoir, with the sky behind her, playing with the silky ears of Twinkles snuggled asleep in her lap. She, too, was waiting. For whom? For what?
That night he wrote a letter to Hal; tore it up and rewrote it. Even then he hesitated. At last he decided to sleep over the wisdom of sending it.
CHAPTER XI—THE KEYS TO ARCADY
Of a sudden life became glorious—more glorious than he had ever believed possible. It commenced on the morning after he had written his letter to Hal.
He was seated in the white mirrored room of the Brevoort which looks out on Fifth Avenue. From the kitchen came the mutter of bass voices, passing orders along in French, and the cheerful smell of roasting coffee. Scattered between tables, meditative waiters were dreaming that they were artists’ models, each with a graceful hand resting on the back of a chair in readiness to flick it out invitingly at the first sight of an uncaptured guest. From the left arm of each dangled a napkin, betraying that he had served his appenticeship in boulevard cafés of Paris.
Outside, at irregular intervals, green buses raced smoothly with a whirr-whirr, which effaced during the moment of their passage the clippity-clap of horses. Past the window, from thinning trees, leaves drifted. When they had reached the pavement, the breeze stirred them and they struggled weakly to rise like crippled moths. There was an invigorating chill in the October air as though the sunshine had been placed on ice. Pedestrians moved briskly with their shoulders flung back. They seemed to be smiling over the great discovery that life was worth living, after all.
A boy halted under the archway and threw about him a searching glance. Catching sight of Teddy, he hurried over and whispered. Teddy rose. In the hall the telephone-clerk was watching. “Booth number three, Mr. Gurney.”
As he lifted the receiver he was still discussing with himself whether or no he should send Hal that letter.