Beneath her fur cape, Anne clasped gloved hands convulsively together.
“Oh, poor boy, and he never let me know!” she murmured contritely. She faced with shame a thrill of relief. So Alexis had not neglected her wilfully after all.
“Where is he now? Is he—alone?”
The answer came deliberately, from averted lips.
“Yes, he is in his apartment in Gramercy Park. He is alone with the exception of a day and night nurse. He—he prefers it that way.” She faltered for the first time, then continued with a resumption of hardness. “Women have always been superfluous to Alexis. I have heard all geniuses are the same.”
The sheer, foolish bravado of it pierced Anne’s heart. The impulse to put her arms about the proud, suffering, little creature was almost irresistible, but she repelled it scornfully. Why cheapen the child’s dignity by histrionics? This was obviously neither the time nor place for explanations. Let those come later. The important thing at present was to get to Alexis as quickly as possible, and with as little friction. So she said nothing, but gazed steadily at the stream of motors which glutted Park Avenue like an endless chain of monster glowworms.
Without turning perceptibly, Claire cast a surreptitious glance in her direction. In the constant glare from passing motors, Anne emerged, doubly magnificent in regal furs, and jeweled band glowing within the copper meshes of her hair, the proud face of a patrician, charmingly insolent, utterly non-committal. Beside her, Claire felt smitten with mediocrity as with a hopeless disease. And yet it was she herself who was bringing this woman to Alexis. Why not? He desired her. Perhaps his very life depended upon her presence. When existence narrowed down to a primal factor such as death, one shed all fears except one. Her eyes fixed upon Anne, she suddenly laughed aloud.
“I startled you, didn’t I?” she said harshly, in response to Anne’s look of surprise, “but the mirthfulness of the occasion suddenly overcame me. It—it is funny, isn’t it? Just——” her voice faltered ever so slightly, “just like the movies?”
Anne looked back at her gently. “I doubt if real life could ever be as complicated as Hollywood imagines, don’t you?” she replied impersonally.
Bitterly ashamed of her outburst, Claire was about to reply with the same aloofness, when the motor turned into 21st Street and glided toward Gramercy Square. It stopped before a tall, narrow house with an English basement.