Reben was too furious to weep. He nursed his splitting skull in his hands and thought of the Mosaic law “an eye for an eye.” He longed for surcease of pain so that he might devise a perfect revenge against the little beast that had tried to murder him just because he paid her the supreme honor of loving her. He could not trust himself to speak. He found his hat and went out, closing the door softly.
The elevator that took him down returned shortly with Pennock. She had seen Reben cross the hotel lobby, and she came in with a glare of horror. She sniffed audibly the cigar-smoke in the precincts. Her wrath was so dire that she stared at Sheila weeping, and made no motion toward her till Sheila broke out in a clutter of sobs:
“I—I—want some witch-hazel for my elbow. I think I b-b-broke it on old Reben’s j-j-jaw.”
Then the amazing Pennock caught her in her arms and laughed aloud. It was the first time Sheila had heard her laugh aloud. But when she looked up Pennock was weeping as well, the tears sluicing down into her smile.
CHAPTER XX
Sheila wept more as Pennock helped her to undress and drew the sleeve tenderly over the invincible elbow. She wept into the bath and she wept into her pillow. She ran a gamut of emotions from self-pity to self-contempt for so unlady-like a method of extricating herself from a predicament that no lady would have got into. She reproached herself for being some kind of miserable reptile to have inspired either the affection or the insolence of so loathsome another reptile as Reben.
Then she bewailed the ruin of her career. That was gone forever. She bewailed the destruction of Vickery’s hopes—such a nice boy! If she had not permitted Reben to be so rude to Vickery he never would have been so rude to her. She would give up the stage and go live at her father’s house, and die an old maid or marry a preacher or a milkman or something.
She wept herself out so completely that she slept till one o’clock the next afternoon. When she was up she stood at her window and gazed ruefully across the city. On a distant roof she could just see the tall water-tanks marked “Odeon Theater,” and a wall of the theater carrying an enormous blazon of the play with Tom Brereton’s name in huge letters and hers in large. She would never appear there again. She supposed Reben would send her understudy on to-night. Of course the reading of Vickery’s play at three o’clock was all off.
It would be of no use to go to the office. Reben wouldn’t be there. He would doubtless be in a hospital with his face in splints.
She wondered if she had fractured his skull—and how many years they gave you for doing that to a man. She could claim that she did it in self-defense, of course, but she had no witnesses to prove it.