As he walked slowly back from Nance’s, Alan was thinking that, after all, there was no reason why he should not cut and run—no reason except Alix.
He reached his rooms. As he crossed the threshold a premonition seized him. He felt as though some one were there. He glanced hurriedly about. The rooms were still in the disorder in which he had left them, and they were empty. Then he saw that he had stepped on a note that had been dropped through the letter-slip. He picked it up. A thrill went through him as he recognized Alix’s handwriting. There was no stamp. It must have been delivered by hand. He tore it open and read: “You said that a moment’s notice was all you asked. I will take the Montreal express with you to-day.”
Alan’s blood turned to liquid fire. The note conjured before him a vision of Alix. He crushed it, and held it to his lips and laughed, not jeeringly, but in pure, uncontrolled excitement.
IT was not a coincidence that Gerry had sought out Alix at the very hour that Nance was summoning Alan. Gerry and Nance were driven by the same forewarning of catastrophe. Gerry had felt it first, but he had been slow to believe, slower to act. He had no precedent for this sort of thing. His whole being was in revolt against the situation in which he found himself. It was after a sleepless night, a most unheard of thing with him, that he decided he could let things go no longer. He went to Alix’s room, knocked, and entered.
Alix was up, though the hour was early for her. Fresh from her bath, she sat in a sheen of blue dressing-gown before the mirror doing her own hair. Gerry glanced about him and into the bath-room, looking for the maid.
“Good morning,” said Alix. “She’s not here. Did you want to see her?”
Gerry winced at the levity. He wondered how Alix could play the game she was playing and be gay. Alix finished doing her hair.
“There,” she said with a final pat, and turned to face Gerry.
He was standing beside an open window. He could feel the cold air on his hands. He felt like putting his head out into it. His head was hot.
“Alix,” he said suddenly without looking at her, “I want you to drop Alan.”