“Yes?”
[74]
] “The Graystone has made me an offer. I’ve been interested in the movie game for the past few years; been studying it from the inside. And recently Crosby Stone—he’s vice-president of the Graystone—asked me to go to the Coast and take charge of the editorial department at their Western studio. I told him that for the present I couldn’t consider it—health needed jogging up. He said the job would be there for me whenever I wanted it.”
“Seems to me an excellent idea,” she observed.
“Now what I wanted to ask you is this.” He fumbled for his case once more. Against the light from the table lamp, his features formed a sharp tense silhouette. He bent forward, struck a match. It flared upward, emphasized the lines that were almost ridges in his face. Suddenly he turned, and his next words came thick. “Janey, I want you to do this much. Will you—when you close—take a run out to Colorado and spend part of the summer with me?”
The tapering white hand that held the cigarette to her lips dropped as if stricken. She straightened and her drowsy green eyes looked down on him from the immense height of the top rung.
“My dear boy!” she ejaculated.
“Of course,” he put in quickly, “I wouldn’t expect you to stay in Denver. Must be any number of mountain resorts we could go to—I’ll ask Frothingham.”
“But, my dear boy, I couldn’t possibly. To begin with, I’m taking ‘Peacock’ on the road early in August, playing Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago—all the big cities. [75] ]Cleeburg wants to keep me out in it until February when we begin work on a new production. That leaves me only a few weeks’ vacation—”
“Spend them with me. Janey—” He leaned over with a swift, impulsive movement, lifted her left hand, the little finger of which was completely covered by a big beetle-green scarab, and kissed the tips one by one. “Janey, there’s just you—no one else! These last years have been hell. I’ve missed you—I’ve wanted you! A few weeks—is that too much to ask?”
She drew her hand away—gently enough. But a little shudder of disgust ran down her spine. “But I can’t, don’t you see?” she began conversationally. “Those few weeks I must have to myself. I need the rest.”