It was the last straw. His pride was broken. What did it matter whether she cared? The terrible reality was his need of her. He made a dash for the nearest pay-station and rang her up.
A man answered. He wasn’t Mr. Dak. “Who? Mr. Gurney? Hold the line. I’ll call her.—— Little D., here’s your latest. Hurry!”
He heard Desire’s tripping footsteps in the passage and her reproving whisper to her companion, “You had no right to do that.” Then her clear voice, thrilling him even at that distance: “Hulloa, Bright Eyes! I’ve just this minute got home. Did you get my wire?—You didn’t! But you must have. I sent it after you left last night.—Humph! That’s what comes of staying at these cheap hotels. You’d better ask the clerk at the desk.—Oh, you’re not at the Brevoort. At Gimbel’s! What are you doing there? Buying me another watch-bracelet? Never mind, tell me presently.—No, I’m not going to tell you what was in the telegram.—What’s that?”
He had asked who was with her.
“Naturally I can’t answer,” she said; “not now—later. You understand why.—Of course you can come. Hurry! I’m dying to see you. By-by.”
He had been conscious, while she was speaking, that her conversation was framed quite as much for the other man’s mystification as for his own. There had been a tantalizing remoteness in her tones. But what man had the privilege to call her “Little D.”? He remembered now that, when he had done it, an annoyed look of remembrance had crept into her eyes.
Life had become worth living again. The madness was on him to spend, to be gay, to atone. On his way uptown he went into Maillard’s to buy her a box of her favorite caramels. He stopped at Thorley’s and purchased a corsage of orchids. He was allowing her to twist him round her little finger. He confessed it. But what did anything matter? He was going to her. Life had become radiantly happy. He no longer had to eye passing lovers with envy. He was of their company and glorified.
When he had pressed the button of the apartment, he was kept waiting—kept waiting so long that he rang twice. On the other side Twinkles was barking furiously; then he heard the soft swish of approaching garments. The door opened. Through the crack he could just make out her face.
“Don’t come in till I hide,” she warned him in a whisper. “Every one’s out, except me and Twinkles. I’m halfway through dressing.” She retreated, leaving the door ajar. When she had fled across the hall into the passage, she called to him, “You may enter.”
He closed the door and listened in the discreet silence. She was in her bedroom. She had made a great secret of her little nest. She had told him about the pictures on the walls, the Japanese garden in the window, and the queer things she saw from the window when she spied across the air-shaft on her neighbors. She had a child’s genius for disguising the commonplace with glamour. Of this the name she had given him, which was known to no one but her and himself, was an example. She made every hour that he had not shared with her bristle with mysteries by sly allusions to what had happened in it Her bedroom was a forbidden spot; she deigned to describe it to him and left his imagination to do the rest. In his lover’s craving to picture her in all her environments—to be in ignorance of nothing that concerned her—he had often begged her to let him peep across the threshold. She had invariably denied him, putting on her most shocked expression.