She would have promised anything to escape. Again at her desk, she strove to think things out, but from the whirl of her thoughts only one fixed purpose emerged: she must know the day and hour of Stella's intended return, for this detail had escaped her. Making some excuse, therefore, when Paul came for her at closing time, she watched him to the street and then hurried to search his operating-room for the little red-covered book in which his personal appointments were kept. It was not in its usual place, however, nor in his office-coat behind the door, nor in any possible drawer of the cabinet. He had evidently slipped it into some pocket of the suit he wore.
She dragged home in miserable anxiety, pinning all her hopes on obtaining a glance at the book while the dentist was at dinner; but this plan failed her, too, since that night, contrary to his custom, Paul made no change in his dress. The book was in his possession. Of this she was certain, for a corner of its red binding gleamed evilly at her from beneath his coat. Once, in an after-dinner comparison of biceps, which the insurance agent inaugurated in the hall, the thing actually fell to the floor at her feet, only to be noted by a watchful chorus before she might even think of advancing a casual ruffle. She devised a score of pretexts for asking Paul to let her see it, any one of which would have passed muster before his enamored eyes, but she dismissed each as too flimsy and open to suspicion; and so, before a safe course suggested itself, the evening was gone, and she climbed her three flights to spend hours in horrid wakefulness succeeded by even more merciless dreams.
Fate was kinder on the morrow. Paul laid the appointment-book upon an open shelf of his cabinet in the course of the forenoon, and she seized a moment when he was scouring the establishment for one of his ever-vagrant instruments, to wrest its secret at last. She found the record easily. It was among the engagements for that very day: "Miss Wilkes, 11-11.30." The little clock on the cabinet indicated ten minutes of eleven now!
She evaded Paul, who was returning, caught up her hat, and telling Grimes that she was too ill to work that day—which the big incompetent sympathetically assured her he could see for himself—fled in panic to the stairs only to behold Stella's nodding plumes already rounding the sample show-case below. Fortunately she was mounting with head down, and it took Jean but an instant to dart for the staircase to the floor above, from whose landing, breathless, lax-muscled, yet safe, she followed Stella's rustling progress to the dental company's door. When she cautiously descended, the hall reeked with a musky perfume from which she recoiled as from a physical nearness to the woman herself.
Luncheon brought Paul and questions which she answered, as she could, from behind her closed door. He had no suspicion of the real cause of her sudden leaving, ascribing her indisposition, as yesterday, to insufficient nourishment, and joined his imagination to Mrs. St. Aubyn's, and that of the proprietor of a neighboring delicatessen shop, in the heaping of a tray whose every mouthful choked. It tortured her to brazen out this deception, but unaided she could see no other way, and advisers there were none. She might have confided in Amy, had the need arisen earlier; but Amy was become a creature of strange reserves and silences.
She left her room at evening and braved the galling solicitude of the dining room. Mrs. St. Aubyn was for extracting her precise symptoms, and led a discussion of favorite remedies, to which nearly all contributed some special lore, from the librarian, who swore by a newspaper cholera mixture, to the bankrupt, whose panacea was Adirondack air. Paul refrained from the talk, perceiving that Jean wished nothing so much as to be let alone. He was more silent than she had ever known him at table, and she twice surprised him in a brown study, of which Amy was seemingly the subject. Dinner over, he brought about a tête-à-tête in an upper hall, a meeting made easy by the boarders' summer custom of blocking the front steps in a domestic group, of which Mrs. St. Aubyn, watchful of other clusters obviously less presentable, was the complacent apex.
"I didn't trot out a remedy downstairs," he said, "but I've got one all the same. It's a vacation."
"But—" Jean began.
"No 'buts' in order. I've got the floor. It's a vacation you need, and it's a vacation you'll have. Grimes has arranged everything. You're to have a week off, beginning to-morrow, and your pay will go on same as ever."
"This is your doing."