Miss Grierson did not reply, and for a little while they were both silent. Then Raymer said:
"I wonder if McMurtry doesn't think I've dropped out on him. I guess I'd better go and see. Don't wait any longer on my motions, unless you want to, Miss Margery."
When Raymer had gone, the opportunity which Broffin had so lately craved was his. Miss Grierson was left alone on the big veranda, and he had only to step out and confront her. Instead, he got up quietly and went back through the lobby with his head down and his hands in his pockets, and the surviving bit of the dead cigar disappeared between his strong teeth and became a cud of chagrin. There had been a goal in sight, but Miss Grierson had beat him to it.
And the winner of the small handicap? For the time it took Raymer to disappear she sat perfectly still, in the attitude of one who stifles all the other senses that the listening ear may hear and strike the note of warning or of relief. A group of young people, returning from a steam-launch circuit of the upper lake, came up the steps to disperse itself with pleasant human clatterings on the veranda; but in spite of the distractions the listening ear caught the sound for which it was straining. With a deep breath-drawing that was almost a sob, Miss Grierson sprang up, stole a swift confirming glance at the empty chair behind the window hangings, and crossed the veranda to stand with one arm around a supporting pillar. And since the battle was fought and won, and the friendly pillar gave its stay and shelter, the velvety eyes filled suddenly and the ripe red lips were trembling like the lips of a frightened child.
XXIX
ALL THAT A MAN HATH
For four entire days after Margery Grierson had driven home the nail of the elemental verities in her frank criticism of the new book, and Charlotte Farnham had clinched it, Wahaska's public places saw nothing of Griswold; and Mrs. Holcomb, motherly soul, was driven to expostulate scoldingly with her second-floor front who was pushing the pen feverishly from dawn to the small hours, and evidently—in the kindly widow's phrase—burning the candle at both ends and in the middle.
Out of this candle-burning frenzy the toiler emerged in the afternoon of the fifth day, a little pallid and tremulous from the overstrain, but with a thick packet of fresh manuscript to bulge in his pocket when he made his way, blinking at the unwonted sunlight of out-of-doors, to the great house at the lake's edge.