"Lend?" echoed Nellie. "I like that! Anybody'd take me for goods and chattels. Of course I'll come. I'd love to."
"You know, Joey," Crane went on simply, "Nellie's the only woman I know that it's real joy to hear music with. She knows what she's listening to. A fellow can sort of forget that he's got her along, an still be glad he has. As for you, you old money-hunting blunderbuss, the way you squirm in the presence of music ought to be a penitentiary offense. I'm almost glad you can't go." He gave a laugh that was dangerously genuine, and bolted for the hall to get his coat and hat.
"Poor old Joe is almost asleep," said Nellie, sweetly.
Joe did not look it, but Willoughby got out solicitously, and he sat upon a damp bench opposite Cameron's glowing windows, and he laughed and laughed till a policeman sternly ordered him to move on.
"Isn't Willoughby a dear!" Nellie commented as she moved about, putting things in their places for the night. Cameron yawned obviously. Nellie hummed a snatch of a tune.
All that long night Cameron lay stretched upon the edge of their bed, staring into the lumpy darkness. Nellie slept like a baby. But once, soon after the lights were turned off, Cameron's blood froze by inches from his head to his feet. It seemed to him that Nellie was laughing, was fairly biting her pillow to keep from laughing aloud! Gravely, of the darkness, he asked how all this had come about. He asked it of the familiar, shadowy heap of Nellie's clothes upon the chair by the window, asked if he had deserved it. Toward dawn he slept.
III
Cameron, after the way of the new man, kept some evening clothes down town. It saved traveling. The next afternoon, about four o'clock, there came, somewhere between the pit of his stomach and his brain, an aching weight. Conscience! At six-thirty he hung his dinner-jacket back in the closet and sent the directors word that he had a headache. Then, as blind as a moth, he started for home, for that lamp about which Nellie "Loved to buzz."
He let himself into the apartment, chuckling to think of Nellie's surprise, at just the hour at which they were used to dining. The place was shadowy, the table in its between-meals garb. The aching weight came back. He tapped on the nursery door.
Miss Merritt, the nurse, was dining by the nursery window, Billy's high chair drawn near by. Billy, drowsy and rosy, was waving a soup-spoon about his head, dabbing at the lights upon the silver with fat fingers that were better at clinging than at letting go.