So Peter leaned back and sat very still again, holding her hand down between the two seats.
Finally the rehearsal was over. They evaded the manager and walked. There was a river in this town, and a river road. Peter sought it. And out there in the country, with buds and robins all about them and buds and robins in his heart, he kissed her. He knew that there had never been any woman in all the world but Grace, and told her so. All of his life except the hours he had spent with her faded into an unreal and remote dream.
Grace had something on her mind. But it was a long time before she could bring Peter to earth. Finally he bethought himself.
“My dear child,” he said—they were strolling hand in hand—“here it is after seven! You've had no dinner—and you're going on to-night.”
“Not to-night, Peter. Not until Monday.”
“But—but—”
“Mr. Neuerman and I have been trying to explain what we were doing, but you wouldn't listen. Peter, I've made a lot of suggestions for the part, He asked me to. I want your approval, of course. I'm going to ask him to show you what I've done.” But Peter heard only dimly. Near the hotel, she left him, saying, with a trace of anxiety: “I don't want to see you again, Peter, until you have read it. Look me up for lunch to-morrow, and tell me if you think I've hurt your play.”
Neuerman came to him late that night with a freshly typed manuscript. He tried to read it, but the buds and robins were still alive, the play a stale dead thing.
Friday morning, there was a letter for Peter, addressed in Sue's hand. The sight of it confused him, so that he put it in his pocket and did not open it until after his solitary breakfast. It had the effect of bringing Sue suddenly to life again in his heart without, at first, crowding Grace out.
“It's love that is the great thing,” he thought, explaining the phenomenon to himself. “The object of it is an incident, after all. It may be this woman, or that—or both. But the creative artist must have love. It is his life.”