She beamed at her now across the table and insisted, as of old, that she eat two of the three slices of pink ham shaved to a refined thinness, and then they went into the pretty parlor and visited cozily until the little spinster's head began to jerk forward in the pauses, and Sarah Farraday, who had waited conscientiously until nine o'clock, appeared. Then Miss Lydia went upstairs to take off her plump, snug things and slip into her flannelette nightdress--the nights were still what she called "pretty sharp," and get into bed and "read until she got sleepy."

"Hannah says she sneaks in every night and snaps off the light after she's sound asleep," said Sarah. "It's a mercy she doesn't have to use a lamp,--she'd have burnt the house down years ago."

"She 'doesn't sleep,'" said Jane, looking tenderly after her, plodding plumply up the stairs, "she 'just rests her eyes for a moment.' Sally, let's go up to my room and have a regular, old-time talk-fest!"

So they went up the narrow stairs with their arms entwined about each other and took off their dresses and slipped into kimonos and let down their hair, but they found a strange and baffling constraint.

"Sally, _dear_," Jane determinedly broke the spell, "what's the silly matter with us?"

The blonde music teacher's eyes filled up with her ready tears.

"It's--you've been away so long, and we've drifted so far apart....

Your life--your wonderful life----"

"Now, Sarah Farraday," her friend pounced upon her, "after the miles upon miles of letters I've written you, do you dare to feel that you don't know as much about my life as I do? Viper-that-bites-the-hand-that-writes-to-it!

Why, I could have done another playlet--two--in the time I've taken to tell you everything!"

"You've been marvelous about letters," Sarah admitted with a grateful sniff, "but----"

"And what's more--and this admits of no argument--next winter you're coming down to me for a month of giddy gamboling and to soak your soul in symphonies and operas!"

Sarah Farraday gave a little gasp and her thin cheeks flushed. "Oh, my dear, you're a lamb to think of it, but of course I couldn't. It's wonderful, just even to _think_ about it, but it couldn't possibly happen."

"Why not?"

"Because," said Sarah, doggedly, "it's much too good to be true."

"Now that," said Jane sternly, "is a wicked and immoral remark! There is nothing too good to be true, and it's blasphemy to say so."

"Oh, well ... of course, with _you_--" She left her sentence trailing and let her thin hands fall in her lap limply, palm upward and stared at Jane. Her dark hair was shimmering and floating about her and her dark eyes were pools of light. "Janey," she leaned toward her and spoke wistfully, "are you really as impossibly happy as you look?"

"Happier," said Jane, promptly. She began to brush her dusky mane with long and sweeping strokes. "Still doing this a hundred and twenty times a night, Sally, no matter at what scandalous hour I come in."

But the other persisted with sudden sapience. "I mean, are you really as happy as you act, or are you just--gay?"

"Both," said Jane, stoutly. ("Sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four--) I've had a bright and shining time, work and play, with my feet very much on the earth,--or the pavements, rather. I'm satisfied, Sally."

"But oh," said Sarah, forlornly, "you said you wouldn't be really 'going away' from us, but you have! Millions of miles away--a whole world away, Jane! You've proved your point,--succeeded beyond our wildest dreams----"

"Not beyond _my_ wildest dreams, old dear," said her best friend with happy impudence. "You were more modest for me than I was for myself!"

"--beyond our wildest dreams," Sarah repeated stubbornly, "and you can carry on your work just as well here, now, and wouldn't it be the loveliest, most natural thing in the world for you to stay at home?

Jane--_poor_ old Marty!" She ran to Jane and flung her arms emotionally about her.

"Sally, there's no more chance----"

But the other cut in, panic-stricken, "Oh,--don't make up your mind now--to-night! Wait! Just spend the summer in the dear old way, as we've always done, and see if you don't fit right into your old niche again, with--with----"

"With a steadily fattening Marty," said Jane, bright-cheeked, "and a hot, pink nursery with a fat and well-oiled Kewpie?"

"Jane," said Sarah coldly, "there are some things too sacred to----"

"To be anything but decently and sanely frank about," said Jane. "My child, the story isn't going to have that particular happy ending for which you pant. You see all my life in a proscribed pattern. Like a sentimental ballad's second verse ... back to the gra.s.sy meadows ...

childhood's happy hours again.... Once again he sang--

"'For you are my li--hittel--sw--heet--heart.'"

"Then," said Sarah with conviction, "it's either the man-you-met-on-the-boat, or that Irish missionary person!"

Jane laughed. Wasn't it amazing how good old Sally, herself conceived for celibacy, yearned to mate up every one within her ken! Nature's little way of evening up, perhaps; if Sarah herself was to carry on the race chain, was she to make it up by tireless toil in urging others on?

"Sally, Michael Daragh, as I've tried to make clear, is an over-soul. His large feet lug his large frame about on this terrestrial sphere, but in reality he isn't here at all. He is quite literally absent from the body and present with the Lord. As I told you before,--a large body of man entirely surrounded by conscience. No more aware of me, as a woman, than he is of Emma Ellis--and you don't get the force of that"--she grinned shamelessly--"unless you know Emma."

"Then, how about--the other one?"

Jane considered, picking and choosing her words as she loved to do.

"Well, Michael feels I am too much of the world, Rodney that I am too little; Michael is above me, spiritually speaking, and Rodney is beneath--which would, of course, make him much the pleasanter person to live with! Rodney is thoroughly and comfortably this-worldly; Michael is--other-worldly! This is the truth of the matter, Sally; Rodney Harrison is keen about my neat little brain and Michael Daragh is gravely concerned about my soul, but I think neither one is interested in my heart!"

She sprang to her feet and threw a gorgeous robe about her. "Come along, Sally! Let's go down and make some chocolate! I've come to crave nocturnal nourishment, and much as I adore talking about myself I've really had enough of the topic for to-night. How many pupils have you now? And how near is the baby-grand?"

She stayed three months at home, tapping briskly at her typewriter in the mornings and giving her afternoons and evenings to the old innocuous routine, and it was said of her that she had changed and gotten citified, of course, but seemed very much interested in everything and everybody, and many were the placid hours in the pink nursery, the drives with the Edward R. Hunters in the new roadster, the teas in the burlapped studio with Sarah Farraday, the meetings of the Ladies' Aid and the Tuesday Club where she gave gay little talks and readings and vague old ladies asked her gently if she was still going on with her literary work.

The only radical change was Martin Wetherby, whose case came up for decision at once, in spite of the sage counsels of the Teddy-bear's father.

The second evening at home Miss Lydia Vail had risen flutteringly and left them alone on the porch in the soft dusk, and at once he had plunged to his doom. There was no serene confidence about him this time, no s.n.a.t.c.hing her into a short-breathed embrace; he was rather pathetically humble before her new poise and achievements, pleading, desperate.

"Marty, dear," said Jane unhappily, "I don't want to be unsympathetic, but indeed I don't think I'm ruining your life! You're so nice and young, and you're doing famously at the bank! Oh, I know it's just because you've held to the idea for so long--and so many other people have, and made it seem--settled. It's just your _habit_--not your heart, that's aching!"

But in spite of this cheering rea.s.surance she had to admit to Sarah that Marty continued to droop at the corners, and to have, in spite of the a.s.sistant cashiership, a look of shaken confidence. His mother, that former arranger of little gatherings for the young people and dispenser of light refreshments, treated Jane with coolness, and had her adherents here and there in the village.

Jane went back to New York the first of September and sold immediately the one-act play she had written during the summer, and was engulfed in the business of putting it on, and presently Rodney Harrison brought her a well-known actor from the legitimate who wanted to rest and make a corpulent salary in the two-a-day, and she succeeded in fitting him to a sketch. It brought her fresh laurels and a larger audience and a better royalty, and she told herself stoutly (as Rodney Harrison had first told her) that it didn't matter in the least that he wanted a good deal of broad and rather edgy comedy and, failing to get it from her, had put it in himself, and, therefore, had his name on the program as joint author.

Every one would know that the clean and clever little story was her own and the edginess his. She took great pains to write this to Sarah and to repeat it often to herself and she glowed under Rodney Harrison's pride in her and the cordial respect of the booking offices and the dazzled admiration of the boarding house.

But one humid evening, when all the vigor and backbone seemed to have melted out of the world, Michael Daragh asked her to ride with him on the top of the bus to Grant's Tomb and walk back along the river, and presently they sat down on the damp gra.s.s like a shop girl and her gentleman friend and looked off across the river, shining in the moonlight, and after a silence Jane said pleasantly, with her new admixture of aloofness and indulgence, "Well, Michael Daragh, I know you haven't marched me here merely to revel in the beauty of the evening.

It's more a case of--'thank you,' said the oysters, 'we've had a pleasant run!' You may as well begin. I'm feeling very peaceful and very prosperous. Who is the poor thing you're concerned with now?"

And the big Irishman, a dull flush mounting in his lean cheeks, faced her squarely. "The poor thing I'm concerned with now, G.o.d save you kindly, is yourself, Jane Vail!"

She hadn't any words in that first dazed moment. She sat staring at him, her great eyes wide.

"It's yourself, surely," he said, sternly, "the way you've wandered from the high road and lost yourself in a bog."

She was still too startled and bewildered to be angry. "I haven't the vaguest idea what you mean. Have you?"

"I have, indeed, Jane Vail. The thing you've just written and sold, now,--are you proud in your heart of it?"

"Certainly I am," she said stoutly, her voice beginning to warm with resentment. "It isn't a cla.s.sic, of course, but it's a thoroughly workmanlike, snappy little act, sure to get over, and----"

He shook his head. "Lost in the bog you are, and sinking deeper every day."