“But something has happened to you—something dreadful.”
“Judith, you don’t need to go out of your way to hunt punishment, when you’ve sinned. And you don’t need to dodge it, either. A little while ago I would have thrown myself in front of a subway train, if I hadn’t been a coward. Last summer I thought I had done something heroic. But when I saw him, this afternoon—”
“Hal Marksley? Eileen!”
“Now you know the worst.” She nodded slowly. “If you’ll let me, Judith, I’ll tell you from the beginning. I guess I’m like mamma in that, too. She has to tell a thing all in one piece, or she loses the thread of it. In the first place, I had a great lesson. I was the last, before luncheon, and Professor Auersbach stopped to compliment me. It was the first time. He explained the meaning of hypsos, the sublime reach of spiritual exaltation—and he said it had come into my playing because of what I had suffered. He talked like Syd Schubert. I went out of the studio walking on air. I don’t know what I ate—or where. All I remember is that I left too large a tip, because the change came out wrong.
“I went to the Grand Central and bought a ticket. It was ever so long before train time, but I thought I’d better scout around and see how to get down to the tracks. You know, the construction people change the route every few days. The first passage I tried had been barricaded. I went half way up the stairs when I came face to face with three men. The one in the middle was Hal.”
“He recognized you?”
“Not at first—and I hurried past them and into a side aisle. It was a blind pocket, and before I could get out of it I heard him calling my name. Judith, I was all alone. Hundreds of people within hearing, and I was all alone with the man I loathe. It was like a nightmare—my feet hobbled with ropes. Before I knew it, he had me in his arms and was kissing me. I suppose I fainted. When I began to see things again, we were in that little temporary waiting-room, and my head was on his shoulder. I looked at him through a mist ... and every minute of last summer rolled over me. It was a flood from a sewer. They say you review your life when you are about to die. You don’t need any hell after that.”
When the tumultuous beating of her heart subsided a little, she went on:
“He wanted to call a taxicab and take me to a hotel. I didn’t get his meaning at first. When I did—life came back to me. I suppose the people around us thought we were a married couple, having our first public quarrel. Once he looked at me with a leer and said: ‘So you were mistaken about what you told me, the first of September—or else you took my advice’. I told him I was mistaken about a good many things, last summer. Then he said he had gone to the studio to look me up, after his sister wrote him that I was studying music in New York, and the secretary said there was no one enrolled there by the name of Trench. He chuckled and said I was a smart kid, and he had half a mind to take me with him to Rio.”
“Rio?”