When Gilfoyle's letter arrived, saying that he was on his way to Chicago, it gave her more delight than any other writing of his had ever given her. She need not skulk any more. Her problem was as far from solution as ever, but she wanted a respite from it, and she gave herself up to a few days of rapture. She was free from her work at the studio, and she was like a girl home from boarding-school on a vacation.
Dyckman found her charming in this mood. She made a child of him, and his years of dissatisfaction were forgotten. He romped through the festivals of New York like a cub.
There was no discussion of any date of marriage, and he was glad enough to let the matter drift. He did not want to marry Kedzie. He was satisfied to have her as a playmate. He was afraid to think of her as a wife, not only from fear of the public sensation it would make, but from fear of her in his home. Young men also know the timidities that are considered maidenly. He did not dream of Kedzie's reason for postponing always the matter of a wedding date.
Kedzie had come to depend on Jim for her entertainment. He took care of her evenings, gave them vivacity and opulence. He took her to theaters, to the opera, the music-halls, the midnight roofs, and other resorts for the postponement of sleep. Occasionally he introduced her to friends of his whom they encountered. It pained and angered him, and Kedzie, too, to note that the men were inclined to eye Kedzie with tolerant amusement. There was a twinkle of contempt in their smiling eyes that seemed to say:
“Where did Dyckman pick you up, my pretty?”
Kedzie's movie fame was unknown to Dyckman's crowd. She was treated, accordingly, as some exquisite chorus-girl or cabaret-pony that he had selected as a running-mate.
Dyckman could not openly resent what was subtly implied, but it touched his chivalry, and since he was engaged to Kedzie he felt that he ought at least to announce the fact. He was getting the game without the name, and that seemed unfair to Kedzie.
Kedzie felt the same veiled scorn, and it alarmed her; yet when Dyckman proposed the publication of their troth she forbade it vigorously. She writhed at the worse than Tantalus fate that compelled her to push from her own thirsty lips the grapes of felicity.
She had no intention of committing bigamy, even if she had been temptable to such recklessness. The inevitable brevity of its success was only too evident. A large part of the fun of marrying Dyckman would be the publication of it, and that would bring Gilfoyle back. She never before longed so ardently to see her husband as now.
She finally wrote him a letter begging him to return to New York for a conference. She couched it in luringly affectionate tones and apologized lavishly for scratching his face when he called. She addressed the appeal to the General Delivery in Chicago, as he had directed in the letter he wrote as a blind.