The morning seemed to have solved the perplexities of the night; chill and gray, it gave the chill, gray counsel: “She will die if you do not return her where you found her.” He vowed the high resolve that Sheila should be replaced upon the stage.
The pain of this decision was so sharp that when she crept back to bed he did not dare to announce it. He was afraid to speak, so he let her think him asleep.
That morning Sheila was ill again, old again, and jaded with discontent. He reminded her of her appointments with the dressmakers, but she said that she would put them off—or, better yet, she would cancel the orders.
He had their breakfast brought to the room, and he chose the most tempting luxuries he could find on the bill of fare. Nothing interested her. He suggested a drive in the Park. She was too tired to get up.
Suddenly he looked at his watch, snapped it shut, rose, said that he was late for his conference. She asked him what time it was, and he did not know till he looked at his watch again. He kissed her and left her, saying that he would lunch down-town.
CHAPTER LIII
Though there was a telephone in their rooms, Bret went down to the public booths. He remembered Eugene Vickery’s tirade about the crime of Sheila’s idleness. He telephoned to Vickery’s apartments and told Vickery that he must see him at once. Vickery answered:
“Sorry I can’t ask you up or come to where you are this morning, but the fact is I’m at the last revision of my new play and I can’t leave it while it’s on the fire. Meet me at the Vagabonds Club and we’ll have lunch, eh?—say, at half past twelve.”
Bret reached the club a little before the hour. Vickery had not come. The hall captain ushered Bret into the waiting-room. He sat there feeling a hopeless outsider. “The Vagabonds” was made up chiefly of actors. From where he sat he could see them coming and going. He studied them as one looking down into a pool to see how curious fish behave or misbehave. They hailed each other with a simple cordiality that amazed him. The spirit was rather that of a fraternity chapter-house than of a city club, where every man’s chair is his castle. Everything was without pose; nearly everybody called nearly everybody by his first name. There were evidences of prosperity among them. Through the window he could see actors, whose faces were familiar even to him, roll up in their own automobiles.
At one o’clock Vickery had not come, and a friend of Bret’s, named Crashaw, who had grown wealthy in the steel business, caught sight of Bret and took him under his wing, registered him in the guest-book and led him to the cocktail desk. Then Crashaw urged him to wait for the uncertain Vickery no longer, but to lunch with him. Bret declined, but sat with him while he ate.