One night in the little upper room, in her own particular time of self-revelation, as Pidge lay on the borderland between sleep and waking, she saw herself like an ogre, and Dicky Cobden like a terrified child in a great house, and she was driving him from one room to another, from one floor to another, to an inevitable cornering in the farthest wing.
Finally an early October evening, and again his car had halted before 54 Harrow Street. Pidge sat beside him, but Dicky had not opened the door.
“Pidge,” he said suddenly, “I’ve got to the end of my rope. I’m not making good. I’m all blurred on what we’re trying to do. It’s—it’s too much for me here.... I don’t want France or Flanders. I’m going into the Near East for The Public Square and a newspaper syndicate.”
“I knew it. I felt it coming, at least,” she said. “And I’ve failed, too, all the time. But, Dicky, back of everything, I know there must be somebody laughing at our seriousness and stupidity. We’ll see the puzzle straight some time. You’ll see.”
They both were sitting straight up.
“Nobody’s—nobody’s shoulder?” he asked with terrible effort.
“No, Dicky. It would only fog us up—all the more.”
XVII
NEW LODGERS FOR HARROW STREET
PIDGE MUSSER was ending her second year in the editorial rooms of The Public Square, when a short story came in from Rufus Melton. Meanwhile, his work had begun to appear in magazines of large popular appeal. This manuscript, called The Boarded Door, had doubtless not fitted into any of them. The chief thing about the story to Pidge was that her cheeks burned as she read.
This made her angry. Another thing, the story was so familiar to her. She seemed to be in and out of Melton’s mind, hearing his typewriter, understanding even his corrections. But also she saw what the author could not—his fluctuations of fancy, which uncentered the tale.