"But he must be making some money, if he can pay five thousand dollars cash on short notice."
"He didn't pay for it. John has taken him around to Mr. Bates, the lawyer, and is having a note drawn up for the amount. Probably he will never collect it."
A silence followed, broken as Mary resumed her typing. Rodrigo watched her deft fingers as they twinkled over the keys, and later as she signed the letter with Dorning's name, sealed it, and placed it in its envelope. Then, with a little tired sigh, she started clearing her desk of papers, preparatory to leaving. But he did not want her to leave him. There was such cool comfort in having Mary near him. He suddenly told himself quite calmly that this thing that he had been increasingly feeling for Mary was the real wholesome kind of love that a man feels for the woman he marries and wants for her soul rather than for her beauty, the kind of love that he had never had for any woman before. Since he knew that to tell her of it now would spoil everything, he merely said, "You work too hard, Mary. You ought to have more fun. Why don't you telephone your mother that you are stopping in town for dinner with me to-night? Then we will go to some quiet place to eat, and a show later, and I'll get you home before midnight."
He realized with surprise that he was trembling with anxiety like a schoolboy who has invited a girl to his first dance.
Mary, who had risen to get her hat, turned and peered at him with a look in which there was shy pleasure. He had never since that fatal mistake on his first day there, approached her socially before. "It would be fun," she said. "And it happens that mother wouldn't be left alone. My aunt is staying with us. I'll see."
She called a number in Brooklyn and spoke tenderly to her mother. She hung up the receiver slowly, turned and said to him, "Mother is willing. Go out for a few minutes while I give a few dabs to my hair."
CHAPTER X
They dined at a little French restaurant just off Madison Avenue. In this quiet atmosphere of good food, simple furnishings and honest citizens and their wives and sweethearts, with Mary pleased and very pretty opposite him, Elise Van Zile fled very far into the distance. Rodrigo had banned all talk of business for the evening. He wanted Mary to tell him about herself, he said. This violated a little the embargo against shop talk, for Mary's interests it developed, lay almost wholly in her mother's welfare and in schooling herself for an executive position with Dorning and Son. She expressed regret that she had never had the opportunity to travel abroad and visit the great art centers of Europe. She seemed to believe that Rodrigo's career, before joining Dorning and Son, had consisted of a rigid course of training and later of travel with art battling with occasional ladies in the foreground. He gently drew the conversation around to a more personal basis. Almost pathetically anxious to make a good impression upon her, he yet gently wished to disillusion her regarding his past. Any other course would not be honorable. For some day soon he hoped to tell her that he loved her.
They saw a very sprightly musical comedy together, a gay little show in which a brother-and-sister dancing pair, who were the ruling rage of the town, starred and gave an exhibition of spontaneous vivacity and grace such as one seldom sees behind the footlights. The whole entertainment was keyed to their joyous pitch, and, though the other performances fell somewhat short of the pace set for them, the impression left with the audience at the final curtain was such that a congenial warmth seemed to envelop the outgoing throngs.