“But Petra! Starving! This is a bad business. Where is he now? Do you mean he hasn’t money to buy meals with? What about his breakfast to-morrow morning?”
“Oh, I loaned him some money, all he would take. He’s gone back to his room. He thinks they’ll trust him for the rent until he gets a job. He’s perfectly sure he’ll get a job, now, you see,—now that he’s all right, you know. He’s terribly confident. He’s going to try to sell cars again. He says he has a knack for that....”
“You say you and Teresa fed him.—Teresa—” Lewis stopped. But surely now the barrier was broken down! Teresa was no longer to remain a mystery. For after all, Lewis and Petra and McCloud and Teresa were now linked together by the twist fate had taken this day. But Petra did not catch the implications of his tone and his hesitation. She offered no further details of the evening’s doings. Where they had fed the starving man, what they had fed him, and Teresa’s part in it all, were not forthcoming. “Is it all right about to-morrow at ten? That Neil should come to see you then?”
“Of course. I wish he had come to breakfast, though. I wish you had waited till I came back, this afternoon. Why didn’t you, Petra?”
“That’s what Teresa said, that we should have waited. But when I found that Neil was hungry—everything else went out of my mind. I’m sorry.”
“My dear! You have nothing to be sorry about. You’d better be rather satisfied with your day’s work, I should say! I hope your family understand that your not turning up for the birthday party was—was not your fault in any way.”
Petra lowered her voice to answer that. It was almost a whisper. Lewis suspected then that she was afraid that her end of this midnight conversation might be overheard. Clare had waited up for her. “I couldn’t really explain anything much about it, Doctor Pryne. You see—he—Neil—doesn’t want any one to know about—about what’s been happening to him. He cares a lot that nobody should know. So I just said it was work for you—my job—that kept me away, and that it had to be confidential. But Clare’s upset—a little.”
“I’m sorry.... I’ll write your father a note tomorrow morning, Petra. I’d better. He will make your stepmother understand. But I’m sorry it was unpleasant when you got home....”
“Oh, I don’t mind that. Clare wasn’t cross. Only hurt, you know. But the evening—well, the evening has been—lovely. We’ve had a wonderful time!”
“We’ve had a wonderful time!” The words and the lilt in them echoed over and over in Lewis’ head, forbidding sleep. He told himself it was the oppressive heat of the night which held him awake, his eyes open on the dark. At least, he told himself that in the beginning. After an hour or more of restless tossing, however, Lewis admitted the truth. It was Petra’s happy, excited voice saying “We’ve had a wonderful time” that was making the very idea of sleep fantastic. The words and the new tone in which she uttered them opened vistas to Lewis’ imagination. It was absolutely inevitable in the light of to-day’s happenings that McCloud should—worship Petra. How could he fail to! Only an imbecile, given the situation, could help it. McCloud, of course, was no imbecile. And Petra—how would she respond to the fellow’s idolization! Now that Lewis was at last face to face with the prophetic misery which was keeping him wakeful, he went on with it—followed the train of thought which he had, in his attempted self-deception, dammed up, while he tossed and blamed the stuffiness of the night.... McCloud was a gorgeous person. Gorgeous was a cheap adjective ordinarily, but in this one instance, it was the right adjective. McCloud—let Lewis face it, see it—was a gorgeous creature, not only physically, to look at, but in inward ways as well. Directness, simplicity and courage. Those qualities make for gorgeousness in a man. How could Petra, after to-night, fail to see McCloud as godlike? Why, her very share in bringing him back to life—for wasn’t that practically what she had done?—would add to her sensibility of his splendor.