"I hope we will never say that word to each other again," exclaimed Phyllis. "It's a horrid word and I hate it. Good-by, Cyril, and don't forget your little slave, counting the minutes at home!"
"Ta, ta, my lamb, I won't forget her. Couldn't if I would, ta, ta!"
There is no harder task than to fold one's hands and wait. Adair had his matinée and his evening performance to engross his thoughts, and allay to some degree his fever of anticipation. But Phyllis had no such resource. Restless, nervous, on edge with suspense--fits of joy alternating with craven terror--she wore out the longest afternoon of her life, and an evening that was more trying still. Her father, to make matters worse, attempted some advances; spoke to her with unexpected kindness; hovered on the brink of another appeal. What a little Judas she felt, sitting opposite him for perhaps the last time, and maintaining a constraint that was, indeed, her armor, for if she responded at all she knew she would never go that night. So she parried and fenced, and kept the conversation impersonal at any hazard, while his face grew steadily more overcast, and the lines of his forehead deepened. She excused herself early, pleading fatigue, and relaxed her attitude to kiss him tenderly good night.
"It'll all come right before long," she murmured softly. "Good night, my darling daddy, and remember I love you whatever happens."
She was off before he could take advantage of a mood so melting. But he felt much consoled, nevertheless.
"She's coming round," he said to himself. "I might have known she would. That's the comfort of her being such a good girl, and so intelligent!"
Up-stairs, the young lady thus complacently described was stripping off her dinner gown, and wondering what dress she would replace it with. She was the daintiest of soubrettes in her long dark-red silk stockings, and Watch, her Russian poodle, gazed at her with an approving, first-row-of-the-orchestra expression that made him look too wicked and dissipated for anything. She gave him a gentle kick on the nose to remind him that staring wasn't gentlemanly, and finally chose a blue tailor-made by Redfern. When this was on, the rest of her preparations were easy. She could not well take Watch, so she took his collar, and this was the first to go into the little hand-bag. A nightgown followed, a pair of stockings, tooth-brush, comb and brush, tooth-powder, some handkerchiefs, the photographs of her father and mother, still in their frames, and a pair of patent leather slippers with gilt buckles. Surely no little bride of her importance and social position had ever set forth with so slender a trousseau. There it all was, dog-collar below, slippers on top, in a bag no bigger than an exaggerated purse. She smiled a little tremulously as she looked at it, touched as only a woman could be by the magnitude of her sacrifice. Her clothes and her father--tears for both, thus equally abandoned, suffused her eyes.
The next thing was a note of farewell, to be found the following morning on her unused pillow. "I am going away with Mr. Adair," she wrote, "taking my own life in my own hands for better or worse. Whether we are to be friends--you and I--depends entirely upon yourself, although alienation from you will be very hard for me to bear. Forgive me if you can, and do not let your disappointment and chagrin embitter you against me; or what would hurt me almost as much--against him. To-night when I kissed you it was good-by, and if it is for ever it will be your own fault, and very, very cruel, for I love you, dearest father, I love you. Ever your devoted Phyllis."
By half-past nine everything was ready; and it was with a consuming impatience that she went into her boudoir with Watch, and ensconsed herself on the sofa to wait. A confidential Russian poodle can be of great help to a young lady in distress. Watch's sympathy; Watch's certainty of everything coming out right; Watch's implied determination to soften the blow to Mr. Ladd; Watch's willingness to whine over the general tragedy of things--all were whimsically comforting. Best of all, he could listen for ever and ever with one ear cocked up, and never lose for an instant his air of highly gratified interest. And what didn't he hear during that hour and three quarters on the sofa! What secrets of longing and tenderness, of girlish hopes, of girlish dreams, of delicious falterings and trepidations--all breathed into that woolly ear!
Then came the suffocating moment of departure--the quieting of an unruly friend--the peeping from the door; the tip-toeing down the stairs; the panicky stops to cower and listen; the stealthy passage of the great dim hall; the groping for bolts and chains; the heavy door swinging heavily back; the cold, dark, starry night beyond; the egress into it; the wild sense of escape and freedom; the sound of gravel under the eager little feet; the gate-way; the wide silent Avenue; the glimmering lights of the cab at the farther corner; and--