"Why, I liked his looks," said Moffatt simply. He got up and strolled
toward the window. On the way he stopped before a table covered with
showy trifles, and after looking at them for a moment singled out a dim
old brown and golden book which Chelles had given her. He examined
it lingeringly, as though it touched the spring of some choked-up
sensibility for which he had no language. "Say--" he began: it was the
usual prelude to his enthusiasms; but he laid the book down and turned
back.
"Then you think if you had the cash you could fix it up all right with
the Pope?"
Her heart began to beat. She remembered that he had once put a job in
Ralph's way, and had let her understand that he had done it partly for
her sake.
"Well," he continued, relapsing into hyperbole, "I wish I could send the
old gentleman my cheque to-morrow morning: but the fact is I'm high and
dry." He looked at her with a sudden odd intensity. "If I WASN'T, I
dunno but what--" The phrase was lost in his familiar whistle.
"That's an awfully fetching way you do your hair," he said. It was a
disappointment to Undine to hear that his affairs were not prospering,
for she knew that in his world "pull" and solvency were closely related,
and that such support as she had hoped he might give her would be
contingent on his own situation. But she had again a fleeting sense of
his mysterious power of accomplishing things in the teeth of adversity;
and she answered: "What I want is your advice."
He turned away and wandered across the room, his hands in his pockets.
On her ornate writing desk he saw a photograph of Paul, bright-curled
and sturdy-legged, in a manly reefer, and bent over it with a murmur of
approval. "Say--what a fellow! Got him with you?"
Undine coloured. "No--" she began; and seeing his look of surprise, she
embarked on her usual explanation. "I can't tell you how I miss him,"
she ended, with a ring of truth that carried conviction to her own ears
if not to Moffatt's.
"Why don't you get him back, then?"
"Why, I--"
Moffatt had picked up the frame and was looking at the photograph more
closely. "Pants!" he chuckled. "I declare!"