“How early you are, John,” she exclaimed. “It is awfully sweet of you, but I’m afraid it will be very dull unless you are fond of chess.”
“You are going out?” questioned John in what seemed to Dr. Crossett as he rose to shake hands with him rather a curt tone.
“Yes,” replied Lola, “I am afraid I must.”
“My dear boy, I am very glad to see you,” said Dr. Crossett to John, of whom he had really grown very fond in those few days following Lola’s accident.
“Thank you, Doctor,” replied John heartily, as he returned the pressure of the Doctor’s hand. “It is very kind of you to say so,” and he turned away, perhaps a little hastily, and followed Lola up to the door. “Shall I go with you, Lola?”
“Oh, dear, no,” replied Lola. “It would bore you dreadfully, and besides I really couldn’t have you, even if you care to come. I am in a great hurry. I promised to be there at three. Sit down and watch the game.” She took him by the arm and led him back to the table. “Father will need your help, I am afraid. See! He is in trouble already. Here——” She stepped to a small table and returned with a box of cigars. “Why don’t you men smoke? Really, you must.” She held the box to each of them in turn, smiling so compellingly that even John was forced to take one, but in spite of her smile he thought he saw in her face a trace of anxious impatience, and to him at least her beautiful new dress was not wholly a pleasure. Little as he knew of the real cost of such a costume, he knew that it was far more expensive than Dr. Barnhelm’s purse could afford, and in some vague manner it associated itself in his mind with Mrs. Harlan and her friends.
“Would you mind telling me where you are going, Lola?” he enquired anxiously.
“Oh, dear, no; why should I?” she answered as she struck a match and held it, first to her father’s, then to Dr. Crossett’s cigar. “I am going to see poor little Nellie Mooney. She isn’t at all well, you know, father, and I really haven’t the heart to disappoint her. There!” She placed the decanter and glasses on the table near to him. “Do see that they are comfortable, John. You may have just as fine a time as you want to, you selfish male things,” she went on as she crossed quickly to the door. “But don’t quite forget me while I am gone.”
She left the room laughing, and as the outside door closed behind her the little clock on the mantel struck three.
The chess game went on deliberately, quietly, and the young man sat there watching it, but at the same time letting his thoughts wander, and suddenly he found himself following in his mind Lola’s progress. He pictured her walking down the Drive with the brisk, swinging stride she had assumed of late; then in his mind he saw her cross Seventy-second Street and take a crowded car; in all the changes of her long, complicated trip to the upper East Side he idly kept pace with her, glancing from time to time at the clock, until he seemed to see her running lightly up the dizzy stairs of a shabby tenement house on a side street and entering a tidy little room on the top floor. He saw the room plainly in his mind, for he had often been there with Lola before they had moved to this new apartment. No, now that he came to think of it, not since Lola’s recovery, but before then they had gone there together almost every day. He liked to think of her there; on her errand of mercy she would stop and buy flowers, he thought. Nellie loved flowers. How her poor, tired little face used to brighten when she would look up from the sofa where she lay all day long and saw Lola coming into the room.