“Yes,” she said, laughing, “—and you’re so funny!”
“Oh, I’m a great wit,” he admitted. “Well, little pilgrim, you require sleep if I don’t.... I think I’ll go in and start a story.... Or read.... Your story is just beginning, isn’t it?”
She ventured a timid jest: “You finished my story for me, didn’t you?”
“I did. When it’s published, and you read it, you’ll never stop guying me, I suppose.”
She still ventured pleasantries: “So you didn’t tell how I left the Park and walked straight into an engagement, did you?”
“My dear, I bumped you off to sneak-music. It goes, you know, with my clients. They wouldn’t stand for what Miss Blythe did. Neither would the Planet. I’d get the hook.”
They both were laughing when he said good-night.
He went into his room but did not light the lamp. For a long while he sat by the open window looking out into the darkness of Governor’s Place.
It probably was nothing he saw out there that brought to his lips a slight, recurrent smile.
The bad habit of working late at night was growing on this young man. It is a picturesque habit, and one of the most imbecile, because sound work is done only with a normal mind.