“It’s harder now that the play is done,” Betty repeated. “He can’t be driven instantly to work again. I can’t lie to him. He doesn’t fight me—he thinks I’m right—that’s the unspeakable part of it. There is nothing for me to write about except his work....”
And Helen Quiston found her, a half-hour afterward, staring out of the window, exactly as she had left—her hands in her lap exactly the same.... Betty Berry was thinking unutterable things, having to do with adorable meetings in the theatre-wings—of wonderful night journeys, all night talking—of waiting in a little room, and at the head of the stairs. There was an invariable coming back to the first kiss in the wings of the theatre.
“We were real—we were true to each other that night—true as little children. We needed no words,” this was her secret story.... “Oh, I waited so long for him ... and we could have gone out together and served in a little way. But they would not let us alone.”
He had been across to New York.... The second morning after the play was finished, she received a letter with a rather indescribable ending. He told her of fears and strangeness, of intolerable longing for something to happen that would bring them together.... The rest is here:
“I’m a bit excited by the thought that just came to me. And another, but I won’t tell you yet, for fear.... I don’t quite understand myself. I seem afraid. I think I would ask more of myself than I would of another man just now. There seem all about me invisible restraints. Something deep within recognizes the greatness and finality of your meaning to me.... It is true, you do not leave the strength to me. Did you ever—? No, I won’t ask that.... This letter isn’t kind to you—unsettling, strange, full of an intensity to see and be with you....”
Moments afterwards, as she was standing at the piano—the letter trailing from her hand—the telephone in the inner room startled her like a human cry.
20
It was Morning. She did not remember his words nor her answers—only that she had told him he might come up-town to her. He had dropped the receiver then, as if it burned him.
So, it was a matter of minutes. Nothing was ready. Least of all, was she ready. She could hardly stand. She had forgotten at first, and it had required courage, of late, to look in the mirror. She would have given up, before what she saw now, but a robin was singing in the foliage by the rear windows. She went out to open the studio door into the hall, then retired to the inner room again.... “He can heal you, and bring back the music,” her heart whispered, but her mind cowered before herself, and this mate of herself, Helen Quiston, and before his Guardian.... She heard his step on the stair ... called to him to wait in the studio. He was pacing to and fro.
Morning felt the light resistance in her arms. His kiss fell upon her cheek. He held her at arm’s length, looking into her face.