"Don't forget to make your party call," grinned Knowlton at me as I undressed.
"I am not in the habit of overlooking dinner calls," I snapped back at him.
After Knowlton had grinned himself out of my rooms I sat on the edge of my bed and meditated. It was good to have pleasant thoughts again and to believe that a large part of the world was contained in a pair of grey eyes. "I am not in love," I considered, as I struggled, with the aid of a fountain pen, to say something appropriate in my diary. The devil of diaries is, unless one is a Mr. Pepys, that all the appropriate things are said on the uneventful, unemotional days. "No, it isn't love—it's recognition of kinship"—like some one in an old Greek story, after many wanderings I had, quite by chance, stumbled upon a woman, and when we had compared the tokens each of us carried, behold, they fitted perfectly! "I am not yet the Duchess of Towers," she said. "Not yet"—then I again thought of Benedick and the dangers of inference founded upon feminine remarks. I had not been asked to call. For all I knew it was over. I might never see her again. I took down a copy of William Morris's "The Sundering Flood," for I remembered the heroine had grey eyes. All of William Morris's heroines had, I reflected. It was part of the pre-Raphaelite scheme of interior decorating; nevertheless it was comforting to read of grey-eyed beauty, especially as the pages of the diary blankly refused to be written upon. It grew late, and it was hard to separate my thoughts, my dreams, and what I was reading from the other. Indeed, they blended most deliciously—a sort of sentimental intoxication giving me a glimpse of the earthly paradise. Yet Reason kept whispering that it wasn't love; that I was mistaking sentimental self-deception for reality. "What a colossal and ridiculous structure you are erecting upon nothing," said Reason. "Upon a pair of grey eyes," I retorted. "Empires have been built upon less." "Ah," came back Reason, "that pair of grey eyes cared nothing for you, or they would have asked you to call." That was, for the moment, unanswerable. I was annoyed at Reason for waking me up, and for spite decided to write a poem. I was not in the habit of writing verses, for I had an abominable ear for rhythm. Nevertheless, writing a sonnet was the most efficient way of banishing Reason for that night. I got as far as the idea—something about two travellers in the desert of life meeting by chance at a well-rim, only to part again—when, mercifully, sleep overcame me; disgustingly sound, dreamless sleep, and I knew no more until next morning's alarm.
I got up to find Reason, reinforced by her auxiliary, bright sunshine, most firmly in the saddle. Ahead loomed a factory and a seven-o'clock whistle; gone were the magic shadows of the night and all the enchanted garden of sentimental fancies. I attacked my test tubes in a frenzy of efficiency. My eye was clear and my hand steady; ideas flowed fast. Reason was triumphant. Then came a telephone call for me; Reason came a nasty cropper under Instinct's sudden leap. I knew what the call meant before I took the receiver down. Knowlton's cynical eye was upon me as I answered; I cared nothing for him this time.
"This is Helen Claybourne," came a soft voice over the wire.
"Yes, I know," I said; not perhaps the right words.
"I am glad you remember"—I felt her smile, half naïve, half mischievous. "I meant last evening to ask you to call, and I forgot." Reason's forces fled in a panic, scattered by the wild surge of my blood. "Mother will be pleased to have you next Thursday, if that is convenient."
"I'm awfully grateful," I stammered feebly. Why wouldn't words come?
"Until Thursday, then," the heavenly voice said calmly, and there was a click in my ear. The receiver had been hung up at the other end.
"Gratitude is a feeling I never before heard you express," commented Knowlton drily, as I turned away with a sigh, tingling from head to foot. I was reckless with a wild, joyous insanity.