A sleepless night followed.
II
The weather next morning was brisk and clear. Under its inspiration Robert began to recover from the depression of the night before and, for a time at least, to drive away the misgivings that had tormented him. He yielded to the beauty of the forest of Fontainebleau, a fact which made the discharge of his mission for Cornelia much less tedious than he had dreaded.
During his return through wooded walks to the town, he so far regained his self-confidence that he was able to laugh at yesterday's morbid speculations and nightmarish fancies. What a bother he had made about a crisis that ought to have been foreseen, and a sequel that ought to have been taken for granted!
And, as a pure point of information, could he be absolutely sure that Janet really did mean to marry St. Hilaire?
This startling query, coming like a whisper from the void, crystallized a decision towards which he had unconsciously been groping. He would return posthaste to Paris and level the invisible wall that had sprung up between Janet and himself. "An invisible wall!" To suppose that a figment like that could separate two people endowed with good will, quick wit, and flexible tongues, was to insult his intelligence.
Parks, palaces, gardens, and all the other sights of Fontainebleau could go hang!
He tingled with shame as he reflected that now, more than at any other moment since the dissolution of the firm of Barr and Lloyd, Janet might need the friendly counsel or the sympathetic ear that he had pressed upon her with unlimited enthusiasm in their Kips Bay workshop. Yet this was the moment he had chosen in which to act like the screen hero who advances his money or his time to the heroine in amounts arithmetically proportioned to the exact quantity of amorous response from the lady's side. True, this sordid barter was the popular American conception of the course of true love. But did he propose to fall in with this conception? Was he ready to prostitute his gifts to the worship of the great Atlantic bitch-goddess, Success?
If only he had been in a position to make Janet a tolerably acceptable offer of marriage!
Still, no need to blink the fact that he was now better circumstanced than at any time since leaving the Evening Chronicle. Hadn't the Confederated Press given him this assignment at Geneva, the most responsible assignment in its province? He flattered himself that he had reported the proceedings of the Labor Congress with a color, vividness, trenchancy, and fire none too common in American journalism. It ought to make people at home sit up and take notice; it might lead to a much more profitable commission. Look where Hutchins Burley's articles on the Colorado mine strike had carried him, chock-full of rhetorical clap-trap and maudlin pathos though the beggar's work had been!