"She will be up by tomorrow," said Mrs. Strong, impressed in spite of herself by this simple, direct appeal. (All that day she caught herself wondering if he had cast his spell over her!)
"Please give her my love,—and say that I am thinking about her every second of the day," said he gravely, and went away.
Alix had received another letter from Addison Blythe. Enclosed with it was a communication from an official formerly connected with the American Ambulance. It was brief and to the point:
Courtney Thane volunteered for service in the American Ambulance in Paris in November, 1915. He was accepted and ordered to appear at the hospital at Neuilly-sur-Seine for instructions. His conduct was such that he was dismissed from the service before the expiration of a week, his uniform taken away from him, and a request made to the French Military authorities to see that he was ordered to leave the country at once. Our records show that he left hurriedly for Spain. He was a bad influence to our boys in Paris, and there was but one course left open to us. We have no account of his subsequent movements. With his dismissal from the service, he ceased to be an object of concern to us.
Alix did not destroy this letter. She locked it away in a drawer of her desk. She had made up her mind to confront Thane with this official communication. It was an ordeal she dreaded. Her true reason for refusing to see him was clear to her if to no one else: she hated the thought of hurting him! Moreover, she was strangely oppressed by the fear that she would falter at the crucial moment and that her half-guarded defences would go down before the assault. She knew his strength far better than she knew his weakness. She had had an illuminating example of his power. Was she any stronger now than on that never-to-be-forgotten night?...She put off the evil hour.
And on the same third day of renunciation, she had a letter from David Strong. She wept a little over it, and driven finally by a restlessness such as she had never known before, feverishly dressed herself, and set forth late in the afternoon for a long walk in the open air. She took to the leaf-strewn woodland roads, and there was a definite goal in mind.
II — Courtney remembered Rosabel Vick.
"I guess I'd better call her up," he said to himself. "I ought to have done it several days ago. Beastly rotten of me to have neglected it. She's probably been sitting over there waiting ever since—Gad, she may; have some good news. Maybe she is mistaken."
He went over to the telephone exchange and called up the Vick house. Rosabel answered.
"That you, Rosie?...Well, I couldn't. I've been laid up, completely out of commission ever since I saw you....What?...I—I didn't get that, Rosie. Speak louder,—closer to the telephone."