Undecided, he wandered out to the veranda, but the vines which Leila had tended peered at him over the rail and whispered together; in the library her books, her desk, the foolish, impractical reading lamp she had bought for him all mutely recalled her vanished presence. There remained only the drawing-room, where her body had lain, the den—!
With a shudder he turned and mounted the stairs. The blank, closed door of her room stared at him, and within his own were evidences on every hand of feminine thoughtfulness and care. Her influence vibrated like a living thing, all about him, clutching him by the throat, smothering him! Anything, anywhere would be preferable to this!
It was only half-past nine. He could not go to the country club, he shrank from the society of any of his neighbors; he could neither sleep, nor read, nor find a corner which did not cry aloud of Leila! There would be other nights like this, weeks of them . . . .
In swift rebellion he descended to the library and seized the telephone.
. . . . “Mr. Holworthy, please . . . . That you, George? . . . . Yes, Norman. I’ve got your letter and you’re right. I can’t stand it out here. I’ll take Potter’s rooms at his own price, and I want possession by Monday . . . . All right, fix it, will you? . . . . No, but it’s got on my nerves; I can’t go on. I—it’s hell!”
Chapter X.
A Chance Meeting
“Told you you’d like it here.” George Holworthy crossed one pudgy knee over the other and eyed his friend’s back at the window with immense satisfaction, “Old Jim certainly knows how to live, doesn’t he, from percolators to night-lights? You’ll be mighty comfortable here, Norman.”
Storm turned slowly from his contemplation of the shadowed park below, the broad sweep of the river and twinkle of the Palisades beyond.
“It’s great!” he declared briefly but with a ringing, buoyant note which had long been absent from his tones. “I tell you George, old boy, I feel like a new man already! I never knew until now how stagnant a backwater like Greenlea can make a fellow become! Same old trains, same old country-club, same old crowd of petty-minded busybodies! Lord, I don’t see how I stood it all these years!”
The outburst was spontaneous, and not until he saw the look of reproachful amazement which crossed George’s face did he realize that he had lowered his guard.