“I suppose so,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “And you’d think that an actress who had been made love to eight days a week, counting matinees, for years on end, could carry through a scene like this without having an insane desire to burst into tears. If you kiss me, Turner will see you.”
Tab could never remember that moment very clearly. He had a ridiculous recollection that her nose was cold against his cheek, and that in some miraculous fashion a whisp of hair came between their lips.
“Lunch is served, madam,” said Turner awfully.
He was an elderly, grim-looking man, and apparently he did not trust himself to look at Tab.
“Very well, Turner,” said Ursula with extraordinary courage and coolness. And when he had gone: “Tab, you have realised poor Turner’s worst fears; he told me that I was the first actress he had ever taken service with, and I gather he looks upon the experiment as a dangerous one.”
Tab was a little breathless, but he had his line to say.
“The only thing that can save your character, Ursula, is an immediate marriage,” he said boldly, and she laughed and pinched his ear.
The confusion of Tab’s recollections of that day, extended to the golden hours which followed. He came back to town in a desperate hurry—he was aching to write to her! He wrote and he wrote, and an expectant night editor peeped in at him and crept softly away to warn the printer that a big story of the murder was coming along (the night editor had distinctly counted a dozen folios to the left of Tab’s elbow) and it was only at almost the eleventh hour that he found he was mistaken.
“I thought you were doing the Mayfield murder. Where’s your story?” asked the indignant man.
“It is coming along,” said Tab guiltily. He stuffed the unfinished letter into his inside pocket, set his teeth and tried to fix his mind upon the crime. He would stop at the most incongruous moments to conjure up a rosy vision of that day, only to turn with a groan to....