Your kindness deserves a better return than my abrupt and rather churlish departure from "Wake Robin," and, if it isn't already too late to restore myself to your graces, I hope you will accept my regrets and apologies, and the sketch from Thimble Island, which goes to you by express. I hope you will like it. I do. That's why I've giving it to you. But it's hardly complete without the wrecked monoplane and the small person who came with it. Perhaps some day you'll "drop in" on me again somewhere and I can finish it. Meanwhile please think seriously about the portrait. I don't believe I'm just the man to do it. I can't seem to see you somehow. My business is to portray the social anachronism. That is easy—a matter of clothes. But how shall a mere mortal define in terms of paint the dwellers of the air? You have me guessing, dear lady. Imagine Ariel in the conventional broadcloth of commerce. It's preposterous. I can't lend myself to any such deception.
The rest of the letter was more formal and finished with a message of congratulation to Mr. Armistead and a word of thanks for her own hospitality. And he hoped to remain very cordially "John Markham."
Hermia smiled as she finished it and then read it over again. The letter with its mixture of the formal and whimsical both pleased and reassured her. It represented more the Markham of Thimble Island, a person whose identity had lost something of its definiteness since her talks with Olga in the days that had followed his departure from "Wake-Robin." She had been aware of a sense of doubt and disappointment in him and she had not been quite so sure that she liked him now. Of course, if he chose to make a fool of himself over Olga it was none of her affair, and she had been obliged to admit that her discovery had taken from him some of the charm of originality. She did not know what had passed between her guests before her abrupt descent through the pergola, but she was quite certain she had fallen into the middle of a psychological moment. Whose moment was it, Olga's or his? She couldn't help wondering. Olga had intimated that Markham was in love with her. Hermia now doubted. Indeed a suspicion was growing in her mind that it was Olga who was in love with Markham. Hermia smiled and put the letter away in her desk. It didn't matter to her, of course, only interested her a great deal, but she couldn't help wondering why, if Markham was so deeply under the spell of Olga's worldliness, he had not come back to her when she had wanted him.
A northeaster had set in along the coast, and the guests of "Wake Robin" were driven indoors. Olga, when she wasn't playing auction, wandered from window to window, looking out at the dreary skies, venting her ennui on anyone within earshot. Archie Westcott, who was losing more money than he could afford to lose, now lacked the buoyant spirits which carried him so blithely along the crest of the social wave and scowled gloomily at his cards which persisted in favoring his opponents. Crosby Downs, whose waistband had again reached its fullest tension, sought the tall grasses of the smoking-room and refused to be dislodged. Without the shadows of her hat and veil Mrs. Renshaw showed her age to a day, and that didn't improve her temper. Beatrice Coddington had an attack of the megrims and remained in her room.
Hermia played bottle pool and pinochle with Reggie Armistead until they began discussing the exact terms of Hermia's promise when there began a quarrel which lasted the entire afternoon and ended in Reggie's going out into the pouring rain and swearing that he would never come back. But he did come back just in time for dinner, through which he sat pretending that he was interested in Phyllis Van Vorst and casting gloomy looks in the direction of the oblivious Hermia. At the end of three days there were no more than two people in the house on terms of civility, and most of Hermia's guests had departed.
Olga Tcherny, after an afternoon alone in her room, came downstairs at the last extremity of fatigue.
"I can't stand it another hour, Hermia. I'm off in the morning."
"Off? Where?" asked Hermia.
"Oh, I don't know. Anywhere. New York first and then—"
"Normandy?" queried Hermia impertinently.