"Yes."
Another pause, then:
"Yes, I'll come—if there's a reason——"
"When?"
"To-morrow?"
"Do you promise?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll meet you as usual."
"Thank you."
He said: "How is your skating jacket coming along?"
"I have—stopped work on it."
"Why?"
"I do not expect to—have time—for skating."
"Didn't you ever expect to come up here again?" he asked with a slight shiver.
"I thought that Mr. Sissly could do what was necessary."
"Didn't it occur to you that you were ending a friendship rather abruptly?"
She was silent.
"Don't you think it was a trifle brusque, Miss Nevers?"
"Does the acquaintanceship of a week count so much with you, Mr. Desboro?"
"You know it does."
"No. I did not know it. If I had supposed so, I would have written a polite letter regretting that I could no longer personally attend to the business in hand."
"Doesn't it count at all with you?" he asked.
"What?"
"Our friendship."
"Our acquaintanceship of a single week? Why, yes. I remember it with pleasure—your kindness, and Mrs. Quant's——"
"How on earth can you talk to me that way?"
"I don't understand you."
"Then I'll say, bluntly, that it meant a lot to me, and that the place is intolerable when you're not here. That is specific, isn't it?"
"Very. You mean that, being accustomed to having somebody to amuse you, your own resources are insufficient."
"Are you serious?"
"Perfectly. That is why you are kind enough to miss my coming and going—because I amuse you."
"Do you think that way about me?"
"I do when I think of you. You know sometimes I'm thinking of other things, too, Mr. Desboro."
He bit his lip, waited for a moment, then:
"If you feel that way, you'll scarcely care to come up to-morrow. Whatever arrangement you make about cataloguing the collection will be all right. If I am not here, communications addressed to the Olympian Club will be forwarded——"
"Mr. Desboro!"
"Yes?"
"Forgive me—won't you?"
There was a moment's interval, fraught heavily with the possibilities of Chance, then the silent currents of Fate flowed on toward her appointed destiny and his—whatever it was to be, wherever it lay, behind the unstirring, inviolable veil.
"Have you forgiven me?"
"And you me?" he asked.
"I have nothing to forgive; truly, I haven't. Why did you think I had? Because I have been talking flippantly? You have been so uniformly considerate and kind to me—you must know that it was nothing you said or did that made me think—wonder—whether—perhaps——"
"What?" he insisted. But she declined further explanation in a voice so different, so much gayer and happier than it had sounded before, that he was content to let matters rest—perhaps dimly surmising something approaching the truth.
She, too, noticed the difference in his voice as he said:
"Then may I have the car there as usual to-morrow morning?"
"Please."
He drew an unconscious sigh of relief. She said something more that he could scarcely hear, so low and distant sounded her voice, and he asked her to repeat it.
"I only said that I would be happy to go back," came the far voice.
Quick, unconsidered words trembled on his lips for utterance; perhaps fear of undoing what had been done restrained him.
"Not as happy as I will be to see you," he said, with an effort.
"Thank you. Good-bye, Mr. Desboro."
"Good-bye."
The sudden accession of high spirits filled him with delightful impatience. He ranged the house restlessly, traversing the hallway and silent rooms. A happy inclination for miscellaneous conversation impelled him to long-deferred interviews with people on the place. He talked business to Mrs. Quant, to Michael, the armourer; he put on snow-shoes and went cross lots to talk to his deaf head-farmer, Vail. Then he came back and set himself resolutely to his accounts; and after dinner he wrote letters, a yellow pup dozing on his lap, a cat purring on his desk, and occasionally patting with tentative paw the letter-paper when it rustled.
A mania for cleaning up matters which had accumulated took possession of him—and it all seemed to concern, in some occult fashion, the coming of Jacqueline on the morrow—as though he wished to begin again with a clean slate and a conscience undisturbed. But what he was to begin he did not specify to himself.
Bills—heavy ones—he paid lightly, drawing check after check to cover necessities or extravagances, going straight through the long list of liabilities incurred from top to bottom.
Later, the total troubled him, and he made himself do a thing to which he was averse—balance his check-book. The result dismayed him, and he sat for a while eyeing the sheets of carelessly scratched figures, and stroking the yellow pup on his knees.
"What do I want with all these clubs and things?" he said impatiently. "I never use 'em."
On the spur of impulse, he began to write resignations, wholesale, ridding himself of all kinds of incumbrances—shooting clubs in Virginia and Georgia and North Carolina, to which he had paid dues and assessments for years, and to which he had never been; fishing clubs in Maine and Canada and Nova Scotia and California; New York clubs, including the Cataract, the Old Fort, the Palisades, the Cap and Bells, keeping only the three clubs to which men of his sort are supposed to belong—the Patroons, the Olympian, and his college club. But everything else went—yacht clubs, riding clubs, golf clubs, country clubs of every sort—everything except his membership in those civic, educational, artistic, and charitable associations to which such New York families as his owed a moral and perpetual tribute.
It
