It was one o'clock. Blair called a hansom and told the driver to take
him to the Carlton, and leaning back in the vehicle he breathed a long
sigh. He looked like his father, but he didn't know it. He felt old. He
was a man and a tired one and a free one, and the sense of this liberty
began to refresh him like a breeze over parched sand. He thought over
what he had left for a second, stopped longest in pitying Galorey, then
went into the Carlton restaurant to order some supper, for he began to
feel the need of food. He had not time to drink his wine and partake of
the cold pheasant before he saw that opposite him the two people who had
taken their table were Letty Lane and Poniotowsky. The woman's slender
back was turned to Blair, and his heart gave a leap of pain at the sight
of the man with her, and the cruel suffering began again.
Dan gave up the idea of eating: drank a whole bottle of champagne, then
pushed it away from him violently. "Hold up," he told himself, "you're
getting dangerous; this drinking won't do." So he sat drumming on the
table looking into the air. When those two got up to go, however, he
would go with them; that was sure. He could never see them go out
together again; no--no--no! As his brain grew a bit clearer he saw that
they were having a heated discussion between them, and as the room
emptied finally, save for themselves, Dan, though he could not hear what
Poniotowsky said, understood that he was urging something which the girl
did not wish to grant. When they left he rose as well, and at the door
of the restaurant the actress and her companion paused, and Dan saw her
face, deadly pale. There were tears in her eyes.
"For God's sake!" he heard her murmur, and she impatiently drew her
cloak around her shoulders. Poniotowsky put out his hand to help her,
but she drew back from him, exclaiming violently: "Oh, no--no!" Before he
was aware what he was doing, Dan was holding his hand out to Miss Lane.
How she turned to him! God of dreams! How she took in one cold hand his
hand; just the grasp a man needs to lead him to offer the service of his
life. Her hand was icy--it thrilled him to his marrow.
"Oh--you--" she breathed. "Hello!"
No words could have been more commonplace, less in the category of
dramatic or poetic welcome, but they were music to the boy, and when the
actress looked at him with a ghost of a smile on her trembling lips, Dan
was sure there was some kind of blessing in the greeting.
"I am going to see you home," he said with determination, and she caught
at it:
"Yes, yes, do! Will you?"
The third member of the party had not spoken. A servant fetched him a
light to which he bent, touching his cigar. Then he lifted his head--a
handsome one--with its cold and indifferent eyes, to Letty Lane.
"Good night, Miss Lane." A deep color crept under his dark skin.
"Come," said the actress eagerly, "come along; my motor is out there and
I am crazy tired. That is all there is about it. Come along."
Snatched from a marriage contract, still bitter from his jealous anger,
this--to be alone with her--by the side of this white, fragrant, wonderful
creature--to have been turned to by her, to be alone with her, the
Duchess of Breakwater out of his horizon, Poniotowsky gone--Oh, it was
sweet to him! They had rolled out from the Carlton down toward the
Square and he put his arm around her waist, his voice shook:
"You are dead tired! And when I saw that brute with you to-night I could
have shot him."
"Take your arm away, please."
"Why?"
"Take it away. I don't like it. Let my hand go. What's the matter with
you? I thought I could trust you."
He said humbly: "You can--certainly you can."
"I am tired--tired--tired!"
Under his breath he said: "Put your head on my shoulder, Letty,
darling."
And she turned on him nearly as violently as she had on Poniotowsky, and
burst into tears, crouching almost in the corner of the motor, away from
him, both her hands upon her breast.
"Oh, can't you see how you bother me? Can't you see I want to rest and
be all alone? You are like them all--like them all. Can't I rest
anywhere?"
The very words she used were those he had thought of when he saw her
dance at the theater, and his heart broke within him.
"You can," he stammered, "rest right here. God knows I want you to rest
more than anything. I won't touch you or breathe again or do anything
you don't want me to."
She covered her face with her hands and sat so without speaking to him.
The light in her motor shone over her like a kindly star, as, wrapped in
her filmy things she lay, a white rose blown into a sheltered nook.
After a little she wiped her eyes and said more naturally:
"You look perfectly dreadfully, boy! What have you been doing with
yourself?"
They had reached the Savoy. It seemed to Dan they were always just
driving up to where some one opened a door, out of which she was to fly
away from him. He got out before her and helped her from the car.
"Well, I've got a piece of news to tell you. I have broken my engagement
with the duchess."
This brought her back far enough into life to make her exclaim: "Oh, I
_am_ glad! That's perfectly fine! I don't know when I've heard anything
that pleased me so much. Come and see me to-morrow and tell me all about
it."