"I hope she loves you just as much in return, Mr. Jelnik. I hope with all my heart you will be happy, both of you."
"I hope she does! I hope we shall!" he cried, with ardor. "Why, if I could be sure she cares for me, like that, if I could know that all other men counted as little with her as all other women count with me! But I am not sure. And I do not take it lightly, for my woman must be more to me than most women mean to most men. Well, it is on the knees of the gods."
I stole a covert glance at him as he walked beside me. It seemed to me he had never been so beautiful. But his beauty hurt me. I felt old, very, very old, and sad, and tired. The salt taste of tears was in my mouth. My feet dragged.
We entered that strip of land which on a time old Sophronisba barb-wired and barricaded against her neighbors, and which touched the Jelnik grounds in the rear. We were to cut through his garden and enter mine by the gap in the hedge behind the spring-house and I hoped to get into the house and up-stairs to my own room unperceived.
The gray cottage lay dark and silent, but there were lights in Hynds House although the night was upon the verge of morning. A gray light, upon which was stealing a primrose tinge, was already in the sky. It was, in fact, four o'clock. I was so mortally tired that for a moment I sat down on his steps.
"It's been pretty rough on you, Sophy. One woman in a thousand could have gone through this night's experience without going to pieces," said Mr. Jelnik, with feeling. And then:
"Sophy!" cried a frightened and hysterical voice. "Oh, is that you, at last, Sophy?" And turning a corner of the gray cottage, Alicia, Doctor Geddes, and The Author confronted us. They were still in costume, and the Mephistophelian effect of The Author was such as would turn any actor green with envy. Ensued a pregnant pause. It was a lovely situation! It reduced me, for one, to idiocy.
"Sophy! Jelnik!" exploded Doctor Geddes, with a gesture of rage and astonishment.
"Yes. It is I. What is the matter? Why aren't you home and in bed? What are you doing here, at this hour?" I asked, stupidly.
Here The Author, all in red tights, cape, and doublet, snatched his red cap with the cock's feather in it off his head, and bowed diabolically: