Durland shook his head impatiently.
“I couldn’t have done it!” he said huskily. “I don’t understand even now how he got the results he did!”
“Oh, pshaw!” she exclaimed with a happy little laugh. “No man would be so generous of his talents as all that; men are not built that way.”
But she knew that it was true, and that it was because Trenton loved her that he had saved her father from another and crushing failure.
VII
She was able to keep track of Trenton’s movements through Irene, who got her information from John. Grace and Trenton were holding strictly to their agreement not to see each other. Once, as she waited for the traffic to break at Washington and Meridian Streets, Trenton passed in a car. Craig was driving and Trenton, absorbed in a sheaf of papers, didn’t lift his head. He was so near for a fleeting second that she could have touched him. This, then, was to be the way of it, their paths steadily diverging; or if they met it would be as strangers who had ceased to have any message for each other.
Sadie’s baby was born in August and Roy manifested an unexpected degree of paternal pride in his offspring. The summer wore on to September. Now and then as she surveyed herself in the mirror it seemed to Grace that she was growing old and that behind her lay a long life-time, crowded with experience. She felt herself losing touch with the world. Miss Reynolds, with all her kindness, was exacting. Grace saw no young people and her amusements were few. Irene, who watched her with a keenly critical eye, remarked frequently upon her good looks, declaring that she was growing handsomer all the time.
“You won’t really reach perfection till you’re forty,” said Irene, “and have some gray in your raven tresses. I’ll look like a fat yellow cucumber when I’m forty!”
Unless all signs failed Irene and John were deeply in love with each other—the old story of the attraction of apparently irreconcilable natures.
“I’ve told John everything—all about Tommy, of course, to give him a chance to escape,” Irene confided. “But I didn’t jar him a bit. That man’s faith would make a good woman of Jezabel. John’s already got some little jobs—secretaryships of corporations that Judge Sanders threw his way. He thinks we can be married early next year and I’m studying real estate ads. I’ve got enough money to make a payment on a bungalow as far from Shipley’s as a nickel will carry me and there’ll be a cow and a few choice hens. Back to nature for me, dearie!”