“You don’t mean Margaret Duffield? You know her? Why, of course, she’s the very one. Do you mean her?”
“And you know her too?”
“Know her? I have been talking with her until an hour ago. You mystic child, of course you’d know Margaret. Come, let’s go to her and she’ll tell me about you—and I’ll get a chance to see her again to-night even—and perhaps, with you in charge, she’ll want to see me.”
Freda was enchanted. Her feet were forgotten. Barbara was forgotten. The night, the delicious hour, the stranger who was chivalric and mysterious and knew Margaret Duffield,—all of it was rounding out a perfect adventure. She laughed in sheer delight.
“Isn’t it marvelous?” she asked, “this meeting you—you knowing the only person I could go to, isn’t it curious and like a well-made dream?”
He took her by the arm, holding her up a little as they crossed the cobbled street.
“Life at its best is only a well-made dream,” he answered.
In all her life Freda had never met any one who dared to talk like that.
It was three o’clock but the light in Margaret’s apartment still burned. Little lines of it streamed out from the curtain edges. At sight of the light Gregory stopped.
“Lucky it’s on the ground floor,” he said, “she can let us in without any of the others hearing us tramp by.”