"Well, they're not pleasant."
"Well, then, tell me."
For a moment or two Jack remained silent. Perhaps he was trying to find careful words into which to put his thoughts. When finally he spoke it was with a suppressed emotion that sent a quiver through the quiet room. "I can't stand coming here," he said. "I can't stand it. I don't know what you are—whether you're a mere baby who knows nothing, or an absolute little rotter. You tell me I can say what I think, so I'm going to." He got up and went a little nearer to the sofa. "What d'you think I'm made of? Look at yourself in the glass and then see whether you're the sort of a girl who can let a man into her bedroom night after night for nothing. I tell you I can't stand it. I stayed away, not because I wanted to, but because I didn't want to do you any harm. I was a fool for coming here at all. If I didn't believe that you are simply a silly girl I'd stay to-night and come every night as I used to do, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. Next time you signal to a man take care to find out what he's made of and be a bit more careful. There, now you've got it. Good night and good-bye. I've a darned good mind to put the note you sent me to-night in an envelope and address it to your mother. It would save some other fellow from a good deal of unnecessary discomfort. I'm frightfully sorry to be so brutal, but I don't believe you know what you're doing. Perhaps this'll be a lesson to you."
He turned quickly, swung himself out, went up the rope ladder hand over hand and drew it up after him.
Ethel closed her eyes and sat rigid. The boy might have planted his fist in her face.
V
Kenyon had taken Mrs. Guthrie and Belle to the Thirty-ninth Street Theatre that night. A quiet little romantic play, quite unpretentiously written, had found its way to that theatre either by accident or as a stop-gap. The manager who put it there had arranged, even before the opening performance, to replace it at the end of the week with something which had a punch,—a coarse, vulgar, artificial piece of mechanism such as he had been in the habit of producing all of his managerial life. His intention to do this was strengthened by the press notices, which all agreed that the new piece was a very little play about nothing in particular and which made too great a demand upon the imagination of its audience. That last remark of the critics was worth a million dollars to the play's author. The theatre remained almost empty until the Friday night of its first—and if the manager had anything to do with it—only week. The scenery for the new production was already stacked on the stage. But to the amazement of all concerned, except the author, the theatre did business. The house was almost full and the box office was so busy that the young man who looked after it,—a past-master in rudeness,—became quite querulous. On Saturday night there was a full house and the booking was so big for the following week that the notices of withdrawal were taken down and the play with a punch had to find another home. The manager, greatly put out, watched this little play sail into a big, steady success, and whenever his numerous acquaintances—he had no friends—caught him in an unbusy moment, he would say: "I can't make it out. It beats me. Look at the notices. I couldn't understand a word of the thing when I read it. I only put it into the theatre to keep it warm. My word, I don't know what the public wants." He didn't, and he never would. But the author knew. He had made a play which appealed to the imagination of his audience.
Peter had watched the party go to the theatre after an early dinner; had seen Graham go up to his room and his father drive away to a meeting at the Academy of Medicine; and then, anxious to be alone and think things over, he too left the house for a long, hard tramp. He went into the park and walked round and round the reservoir. The night was fine and clear, and up in the sky, which was pitted with stars, a young moon lay on her back. From all sides the music of traffic came to his ears in a never-ceasing refrain, and high up he could see the numerous electric signs which came and went with steady precision and monotony. Every now and then he caught sight of the Plaza, whose windows all seemed to be alight. It gave a peculiar touch of fantasy to that side of the Park.
Peter found himself thinking of some of the things which Ranken Townsend had said to him. Without bitterness, and certainly without anger, he began to see something in the artist's bluntness which gradually made him long, with a sort of boyish anguish, to go in to his own father. The more he thought about this the more it seemed to him right and necessary and urgent to beard the Doctor in his den and break down the curious barrier which shyness had erected between him and his children. He realized at that moment that he stood desperately in need of a father's help and advice. It was quite obvious to him also that Graham needed these things even more than he did. If only they could both go to that wise and good man who stood aloof and get something more from him than the mere money with which he was so generous. He knew—no one better—that he always received from his mother the most tender sympathy, but how could he discuss with her some of the things with which he was faced since the Ita Strabosck episode had come into his life? Kenyon had done much to make it plain to him that it was not good to continue to walk in blank ignorance of the vital facts with which his father dealt daily. He was a man and he had to live in the world. His boyish days among boys were over. They belonged to the past.