The monosyllable brought him up startled and staring. "Why? I hardly know...."

"Didn't you know better?"

"I don't understand you--"

Her eyes were wide and dark to his; all trace of petulance had faded from her manner. "You ought to. You ought to know," she insisted quietly, "that a man like you can't be just _kind_ to a girl like me without.... Oh!" she cried, "I suppose it would've been different if the show had gone out--and everything--but now, with that hope gone--and nothing more to do for you--with no prospects but to lose you--the only friend I've got in the world--!"

Her voice broke at a high pitch, and she fell silent, turning away to stare with swimming eyes down at the table. He saw her trembling violently, her lips quivering. His amazement was extraordinary and bewildering. He heard his voice, as it might have been another's, saying: "Does it really mean so much to you?"

"Oh, can't you see!"

With a little, helpless motion of her hands, she lifted quickly to him a face of flushed and tear-dimmed loveliness. Another man might have been numb to its appeal: to Matthias it proved irresistible, coming sharp upon the shock of comprehending that she offered him her love, herself.

In a stride, hardly knowing what he did, he folded the girl in his arms.

She lay therein for an instant as though bewitched by the exquisite wonder of this consummation of her fondest, maddest dreams; then in a breath became a woman reanimate and wild with love, clinging to him with all her strength, in an ecstasy of impa.s.sioned tenderness.

Bending his head, Matthias found her lips.

"My dear, dear girl!" he murmured.

"Oh," she breathed, "I have loved you always--always!"

"If I had only known, if I had only guessed--!"

"How could you? _I_ didn't know ... not till a little while ago....

And even then, I couldn't have told you ... only the thought of losing you ... my dear, my dear!"

"I never guessed...."

"You're not sorry? You're not angry with me--?"

"Angry? I adore you!"

"You will love me always?"

"Always and forever."

"And never send me away from you?"

"You shall never leave me but of your own will."

"I think I was going mad with the thought of losing you!"

"My beloved girl!..."

The dusky stillness of the room was murmurous with whispers, sighs, terms of endearment half smothered and all but inaudible.

To these a foreign and alarming sound: a rapping at the door.

Matthias lifted his head, wincing from the interruption. The girl in his arms moved feebly, as if to disengage. He held her for a moment still more close. Her heart sounded sonorously against his bosom. "Hush!" he said in a low and warning voice. And then the rapping was repeated. At once he released her. She moved away, blushing and dishevelled, the fragrant freshness of her starched linen waist a crumpled disorder, her hair in disarray; her crimson face one of many evidences of the tumult of her senses.

In the hallway a man's voice said: "He must be in. There's a light--"

A woman answered impatiently: "Of course he's in; but the chances are he's asleep." She called in a louder tone: "Jack--Jack Matthias!"

Recognizing the voice of his aunt, that person groaned aloud--"O Lord!"--stole a glance at Joan, hesitated, shrugged, as if to say: There's no help for it! Then he answered the door.

Helena swept in with a swirl of impatient skirts. "Good heavens!" she cried. "What ails you, Jackie? We knocked half a dozen times. Were you--?"

Her glance encountering Joan, the words dried on her lips.

Tankerville, at her heels, jerked a motor gauntlet from his fat hand in order to grasp that of Matthias. "Surprised you--eh?" he chuckled--"getting in so late. Well, it's all accidental. We were bound home--been visiting the Hastings for a week, you know--but the car broke down just this side of Poughkeepsie and delayed us and...."

He became distressfully aware of his wife's silence, simultaneously ascertained the cause of it, and cut his speech short in full stride.

Matthias laughed a little, quietly: no good trying to carry off this situation; by many a clue aside from Joan's confusion, they were betrayed.

"You've caught us," he said cheerfully. "We may as well own up. Helena, this is Joan--Miss Thursday--my fiancee. And Joan, this is my aunt, Mrs.

Tankerville--and her husband."

And immediately he was conscious of the necessity of bridging the pause that would inevitably hold these three confounded, pending adjustment to his amazing announcement.

"We had intended to keep it quiet for a while," he pursued evenly, shutting the door.... "Helena, let me help you with that cloak.... But since you've declared yourselves in, we can only ask you to hold your peace until we're ready. I'm sure we can count on you both."

Tankerville puffed an explosive: "Oh--certainly!"

Helena glanced shrewdly from Joan to Matthias. He smiled his confidence in her, knowing that he might count upon her doing the right thing to put the girl at ease--just shoulders of the girl as positively as he might count upon her violent opposition to the match as soon as she discovered that he had engaged himself to her pet abomination, a woman of the stage.

With a bright nod to him, she turned back to Joan; drew slowly near to her; dropped kindly hands upon the shoulders of the girl.

"But, my dear!" she exclaimed in a tone of expostulation--"you are beautiful!"

XVIII

Escorting his aunt to the car, Matthias helped her in, closed the door, and then, with a grin of amused resignation masking that trepidation to which he was actually a prey, folded his arms on the top of the door and invited the storm with one word of whimsical accent: "Well?"

"Is it true?" she demanded, as if downright incredulous.

"Most true," he insisted with convincing simplicity.

The tip of one gloved finger to her chin, Helena considered remotely.

"She's very beautiful," she conceded, "and sweet and fetching and hopelessly plebeian. She'd be wonderful to have around, to look at; but to listen to.... Oh my dear! what _are_ you thinking of?"

"Cut it," Tankerville advised from his corner. "None of your funeral, old lady."