Hy watched Peter with growing concern. His eyes roved about the smoke-dimmed, high-ceiled studio. They had lived well here—himself, Peter and the Worm. Thanks to some unknown law of personality, they had got on, this odd trio, through the years. Girls and women had drifted into and out of their individual lives (for your New York bachelor does not inhabit a vacuum)—but never before had the specter of marriage stalked with disruptive import through these dingy rooms.
“Look here, Pete,” he said, “why be so dam' serious about it!”
Peter paused in his pacing and stared at Hy.... “Serious!” He repeated the word under his breath. His long face worked convulsively behind the large horn-rimmed glasses (not spectacles) and their black ribbon. Then abruptly he rushed into the bedroom and slammed the door behind him.
Hy sighed, glanced out at the weather (it was April), picked up hat, stick and gloves and sauntered forth to dine comfortably at his club as a ritualistic preliminary to a pleasant evening. That, he thought now, was the great thing about bachelor life in town. You had all the advantages of feminine companionship—in assorted varieties—and then when you preferred or if the ladies bored you you just went to the club.
Peter sat on the edge of the bed, all nerves, and thought about Sue Wilde. Also about six little bank books.
They had been his secret inner life, the bank books locked away in the middle drawer of the desk on the side next the wall. Nearly seven thousand dollars were now entered in those books—Peter's all. He was staking it on a single throw. He had rushed in where a shrewder theatrical angel might well have feared to tread. It was the wild outbreak of a cautious impractical man.
He thought it all over, sitting there on the edge of the bed. It was terrifying, but stirring. In his plays some one was always saving a girl through an act of personal sacrifice. Now he was acting it out in life. Indicating the truth to life of his plays.... He was risking all. But so had Napoleon, returning from Elba, risked all (he did not pursue the analogy). So had Henry V at Agincourt. After all, considered in this light, it was rather fine. Certain persons would admire him if they knew. It was the way big men did things. He was glad that Sue didn't know; it was finer to take the plunge without so much as asking a return. It was magnificent.
The word, popping into his thoughts, gave Peter a thrill. Yes, it was magnificent. He was doing a magnificent thing. All that remained was to carry it off magnificently.
He dragged his trunk from the closet. The lower tray and the bottom were packed with photographs and with letters tied in flat bundles—letters in various feminine hands. He stirred the bundles about. Some were old—years old; others less so.
Peter regarded them with the detachment of exaltation. They could not possibly mean anything to him; his life had begun the day he first saw Sue Wilde.