For a moment or two Paula was conscious of Pelée, and the gray menace that charged the burnt-out air.
Then came the thought of Father Fontanel and the door that was never locked; and presently her new joy returned with ever-rising vibration—until the long-abated powers of her life were fully vitalized again.... She was wondering, as she stepped into the hall and turned the key in her door, if she would be considered rather tumultuous in cabling Charter.... At the stairway, she halted, fearing at first some new mental seizure; then every faculty furiously-nerved, she listened at the balustrade for the repetition of a voice that an instant before had thrilled her to the soul.... There had only been a sentence or two from the Voice. Peter Stock was now replying:
"He's a man-servant of the devil, this pudgy editor," he said striding up and down the lower hall in his rage. "A few days ago I called upon him, and in sweet modesty and limping French explained the proper policy for him to take about this volcano. To-day he devotes a half-column of insufferable humor to my force of character and alarmist views. Oh, the flakiness of the French mind! M. Mondet certainly fascinates me. I shall have to call upon him again."
Paula heard the low laugh of the other and the words:
"Let's sit down, Mr. Stock. I want to hear all about the editor and the mountain. I was getting to sea somewhere, when the New York papers ran a line about Pelée's activity. It started luring memories, and I berthed at once for Saint Pierre. It was mighty good to see the Saragossa lying familiarly in the roadstead——"
Trailing her fingers along the wall to steady herself, Paula made her way back to the door of her room, which she fumblingly unlocked.
NINETEENTH CHAPTER
QUENTIN CHARTER IS ATTRACTED BY THE TRAVAIL OF PELÉE, AND ENCOUNTERS A QUEER FELLOW-VOYAGER
Charter did not find Paula Linster in the week of New York that followed his call at the Zoroaster, but he found Quentin Charter. The first three or four days were rather intense in a psychological way. The old vibrations of New York invariably contained for him a destructive principle, as Paris held for Dr. Duprez. The furious consumption of nerve-tissue during the first evening after his arrival; a renewal of desires operating subconsciously, and in no small part through the passion of Selma Cross; his last struggle, both subtle and furious, with his own stimulus-craving temperament, and the desolation of the true romance—combined, among other things, worthily to test the growth of his spirit.... The thought that Skylark had fallen into the hands of Selma Cross, and had been given that ugly estimate of him which the actress held before his call, as he expressed it in his letter, "drove straight and swiftly to the very centres of sanity." Over this, was a ghastly, whimpering thing that would not be immured—the effect of which, of all assailants to rising hope, was most scarifying: That Paula Linster had suffered herself to listen to those old horrors, and had permitted him to be called to the bar before Selma Cross. No matter how he handled this, it held a fundamental lesion in the Skylark-fineness.