She never could have said it if the lights had been on. She even flushed in the dark as she saw Dick lean forward to look into her eyes.
“Do you mean,” he asked eagerly, “that you’d feel that way yourself?”
“I mean that any and every nice girl feels that way.”
Just then the curtain went up, but for all Dick’s interest in Madeline’s play, his hand was crushing one of Eleanor’s, and his heart was pounding so hard that the first act was half over before he had gathered his wits to know what it was all about.
The minute the curtain rang down, Dick turned to Eleanor. “In that case,” he said under cover of the applause, “you’ve got to promise to marry me now. I can give you a good deal besides love and a chance to help, but I’ve waited almost two years without daring to say a word, and I’ve been frightened to death for fear I should lose you to some fellow who could speak sooner.”
“You needn’t have worried,” Eleanor told him, “because I was waiting too. But I consider that you’ve wasted two whole years for me out of my life. You’ll have that to make up for, monsieur. Can you do it?”
“I can only try,” said Dick very soberly.
The play was a triumph for Miss Dwight and for the author. That young person was sitting alone in the last row of the peanut gallery. Occasionally she pinched herself to make sure that she was awake, and just before the final curtain fell she crept softly out and went home by herself in a jolting, jangling Broadway car. There Dick and Eleanor found her rocking by the fire, the inevitable black kitten in her lap.
“Come to supper,” Dick said. “You promised, and the taxi waits.”
Madeline smiled dreamily up at them and patted the kitten. “Yes, Dick, I’ll come to supper as long as I needn’t dress up for it. What’s the matter, Eleanor?”