Several times, late that afternoon and evening, the Queen was called up by the slave of the flying speech and enabled to talk with her husband. To her delight, in her own room, by her bedside, she found a telephone, through which, by calling up Collins' office, she gave her good night to Francis. Also, she essayed to kiss her heart to him, and received back, queer and vague of sound, his answering kiss.
She knew not how long she had slept, when she awoke. Not moving, through her half-open eyes she saw Francis peer into the room and across to her. When he had gone softly away, she leapt out of bed and ran to the door in time to see him start down the staircase.
More trouble with the great god Business was her surmise. He was going down to that wonderful room, the library, to read more of the dread god's threats and warnings that were so mysteriously made to take form of written speech to the clicking of the ticker. She looked at herself in the mirror, adjusted her hair, and with a little love-smile of anticipation on her lips put on a dressing-gown another of the marvelous pretties of Francis' forethought and providing.
At the entrance of the library she paused, hearing the voice of another than Francis. At first thought she decided it was the flying speech, but immediately afterward she knew it to be too loud and near and different. Peeping in, she saw two men drawn up in big leather chairs near to each other and facing. Francis, tired of face from the day's exertions, still wore his business suit; but the other was clad in evening dress. And she heard him call her husband "Francis," who, in turn, called him "Johnny." That, and the familiarity of their conversation, conveyed to her that they were old, close friends.
"And don't tell me, Francis," the other was saying, "that you've frivoled through Panama all this while without losing your heart to the senoritas a dozen times."
"Only once," Francis replied, after a pause, in which the Queen noted that he gazed steadily at his friend.
Further," he went on, after another pause, "I really lost my heart but not my head. Johnny Pathmore, O Johnny Pathmore, you are a mere flirtatious brute, but I tell you that you've lots to learn. I tell you that in Panama I found the most wonderful woman in the world a woman that I was glad I had lived to know, a woman that I would gladly die for; a woman of fire, of passion, of sweetness, of nobility, a very queen of women."
And the Queen, listening and looking upon the intense exaltation of his face, smiled with proud fondness and certitude to herself, for had she not won a husband who remained a lover?
"And did the lady, er ah did she reciprocate?"
Johnny Pathmore ventured.