"He didn't," cried Perdita not with bravado, but with a confidence which Maud realized with surprise was genuine. "I hadn't been with her three minutes before I knew that. But take my advice," again her voice fell to that teasing note. "If you really love Wallace make up your differences with him to-day, to-day, before he, a playwright, meets the actress. Then get a new steel chain, one that he can't chew through, and fasten it securely to his collar."
CHAPTER XIX
HE CALLS ON HIS WIFE
Early in April Hepworth returned to New York. It was a gentle, smiling April, inclining more to laughter than to tears and striving to obliterate the memories of March. He arrived one evening and wasted no time in communicating with Perdita. The next day in fact was marked by the passage of notes between them, severely businesslike, and yet models of courtesy.
The result of these diplomatic negotiations was that Mr. Cresswell Hepworth, at a suitable hour the following morning, wended his way to his wife's business establishment.
It was a deliciously balmy morning, the rare sort of a day that slips in now and then between April showers and sets one dreaming of the glory of the spring in the silent woody places. The great, roaring canyons of brick and stone floated in a silvery, sparkling mist, and in that atmospheric alembic dreary perspectives assumed an unsubstantial and fairy-like beauty. The little leaves on the trees fluttered in the soft breeze and were so young, so green, so gay that they lifted the heart like tiny wings of joy.
In spite of himself there was the hint of a smile about the corners of Hepworth's mouth and this deepened and deepened until as he rang the bell of his wife's door, he suddenly became conscious of it, and carefully suppressed it.
The sphinx, past mistress of inscrutability of expression, would have paid him the tribute of a flicker of admiration as he entered the reception-room. It was without a suggestion of curiosity or even interest in his eyes that he glanced absently about him; perhaps the long droop of the lids at the corners, which appeared to accentuate his rather weary and listless gaze, was more marked than usual, but this was always so when he was making mental notes and registering his observations with the rapidity and accuracy of a ticker.
He awaited Perdita in her reception-room, that charming apartment, and here, in view of certain events which occurred later, it would be well to give the plan of the first floor.