[300]
] She rode with him every day after that. He arranged it as a matter of course. He had a direct way of taking things into his own hands just as he had a direct way of looking and speaking. Often it made her gasp but at the same time possessed the attraction male dominance always holds for the primitive in woman. Particularly to the woman who has fought her own battles is there something hypnotic in having decision taken out of her hands.
At the end of two weeks she called his horses by name; had fed them more sugar than was good for them; had dined and danced with him; and knew, though to herself she denied it, that tongues quick to wag, were busy with their names. Nancy Bradshaw, popular star, and Dick Cunningham who, in the eyes of the world, could like Joshua command sun and moon and stars to stand still!
When his friends—men who made the nation’s pulse throb—stopped at their table in a restaurant or, as was frequently the case, joined them at his invitation and gave to Nancy the homage a charming actress always receives from men a bit jaded, Cunningham’s probing glance warmed and a smile softened his sharply determined mouth.
He sent her flowers and books as a matter of course. Wherever they went he surrounded her with an atmosphere of unconscious luxury that was like a narcotic.
And finally at the house of the fir trees, instead of that diamond-lighted district bounded by the Forties, he gave the supper-party they had planned the night of their meeting. Ted Thorne was there and Lilla Grant, [301] ]ingénue of the company, a sinuous little thing with pert nose, full Oriental lips and eyes that might have come from Egypt. She had begged Nancy to let her meet Cunningham.
“She’ll get there, that kid,” Jerry Coghlan had once remarked. “Don’t know yet whether her name used to be O’Shaughnessy or Rabinowitz. But take it from me, she’ll make her mark—maybe because it used to be both.”
Lights shone in the upper windows as the four stepped from the car, not the brilliant light of electricity but one gentle and golden. They went up the flight of steps leading to the unique apartment above the stable.
“Make yourselves at home. I’ll send a maid.” Cunningham opened the door to a room done in gray and rose, with enameled dressing-table and pier-glass, and rose brocade chairs, divan and hangings.
Lilla dropped her frou-frou of cloak from bare shoulders and, taking the center of the floor, gazed round with glistening eyes.
“What a duck you were to ask me!” she cried. “I’ve been just crazy to see this place.”