"Nothing," she breathed brokenly in return. "Nothing--only--I guess--I'm a little blue--lonely without you, dear. I'm afraid I need either to be at work or--with you always."

"Then be comforted, sweetest girl; the time won't be long, now--I believe in my very soul."

"Till when--?" She leaned back in her chair, examining his face with eyes that shone with infectious fire of his confident excitement. "Till when? What do you mean? Something has happened!"

"You're right," he laughed exultantly: "two big things have happened to me today. Wylie has accepted 'Tomorrow's People': we signed the contract this afternoon; he's to put it on about the first of the year."

"Oh, I'm so glad!"

"But that isn't all: Algerson has bought Rideout's contract and is to produce 'The Jade G.o.d' in Los Angeles as soon as it can be got ready."

"Dearest!"

There was an interval....

"Only," he said presently, "it's going to mean a little real loneliness for you, dear--not more than a few weeks--"

"Why?" she demanded sharply.

"Because I've promised Algerson to superintend the rehearsals. I couldn't well refuse. You know how much it means to us, dear heart."

"When do you leave?"

"Monday--the Twentieth Century Limited for Chicago then on to Los Angeles."

"And you'll be gone, altogether, how long?" Joan persisted tensely.

"With good luck, about a month. If we strike a snag, of course, I may have to stop over a week or so longer. It's hard to say."

"Then I'm to be left--here--alone--with nothing to do but wait--perhaps more than a month!"

"I'm afraid so, dear. It's for both of our sakes. So much depends--"

"Jack!" Placing her hands on his shoulders, Joan held him off. "Take me with you," she pleaded earnestly.

"Think a moment, sweetheart. You must see how impossible it is. For one thing, it wouldn't--O it's all very well to say 'Conventions be hanged!'

but--it wouldn't look right. We're not married."

"Take me with you, Jack," she repeated stubbornly.

He shook his head. "And, fairly and squarely, dear, I can't afford it. I haven't got enough money. Even if we were married, I'd have to leave you here."

For a moment longer the girl kept her hands upon his shoulders, exploring his face with eyes that seemed suddenly to have been robbed of much of their girlishness. Then: "Very well," she said coldly, and releasing him, she sat back and averted her countenance.

Matthias got up, distressed and perplexed.

"You can't mean your love won't stand the strain of a few weeks'

separation, Joan!"

She made no answer. He shrugged, moved to the work-table, found a cigarette and lighted it.

"Surely you can wait that long--"

"I'll do my best," she interrupted almost impatiently. "If it can't be, it can't. So don't let's talk any more about it."

"I'd give a good deal to be able to arrange things the way you wish," he grumbled. "But I don't see...."

She was silent. He paced the worn path on the carpet for a few moments, then turned aside to his desk and stood idly examining a little collection of correspondence which had been delivered in his absence.

One or two letters he opened, skimmed through without paying much attention to their contents, and tossed aside. A third brought from him an exclamation: "h.e.l.lo!"

"What is it?" Joan enquired indifferently.

"What do you say to running down to Tanglewood over Sunday?"

"Tanglewood?"

"My Aunt Helena's home--down at Port Madison, Long Island, you know. She has just written, asking us. It would be rather fun. Would you like to go?"

A blunt negative was barely suppressed. Curiosity made Joan hesitate, and temporarily to forego further petulance.

"I've got nothing to wear," she doubted uncertainly.

"Rot: you don't need anything but shirtwaists and skirts. There won't be anybody but you, Helena, George Tankerville and myself." Matthias leaned over the back of her chair and caught her face between his hands. "It'll be a splendid holiday for us, before I start. Say yes--sweetheart!"

Joan turned up her face to his, lifting her arms to encircle his neck.

She nodded consent as he bent his lips to hers.

XX

At times Joan was more than half inclined to doubt the reality of some of those unique phases of existence to which her love affair introduced her. Some experiences seemed beyond belief, even to an imagination stimulated by inordinate ambition and further excited by incessant novel-reading and theater-going.

On the Friday morning following the receipt of Helena's invitation she went shopping, squandering upwards of three weeks' savings with that delicious abandonment to extravagance which is possible only to a woman of supremely confident tomorrows. The hundreds she was in subsequent days to disburse as thoughtlessly never afforded her one-half the pleasure that accompanied the expenditure of those seventy h.o.a.rded dollars. (For aside from the rent of her room, her a.s.sociation with Matthias had spared her nearly every other expense of daily life.)

Among other things, she purchased for twenty-five dollars a simple evening frock eminently adapted to her requirements. A tolerably faithful copy of a foreign model, it had been designed to fetch a much higher price than that at which Joan was able to acquire it at an end-of-the-season bargain sale. She tried it on before deciding, and had the testimony of the department store mirrors that it was wonderfully becoming to her years and type of beauty. And it was the only garment of its kind that she had ever owned.

As she hurried, tardily, to keep an appointment with Matthias for lunch at Martin's, she told herself that she would never know greater happiness. She could not rid her mind of that wonderful frock and the figure she had cut in it, posing in the dressing-room.

But after luncheon--over which they lingered until they were quite alone in the eastern dining-room--with some hesitation, and having a.s.sured himself that there was not even a waiter near at hand, Matthias fumbled in one of his waistcoat pockets, produced a small leather-covered case, and pa.s.sed it across the table.

"I'd meant to keep this till we got home," he said with an awkward smile. "But I don't think I can wait...."

Joan opened the box--and drew the longest breath of her life. Her heart seemed to leap and then stand stock-still for a full minute before she grasped the magnificence of his present: her engagement ring!

Then and there the girl lost all touch with the tough verities of life; and throughout the day and until she lost consciousness in bed that night, a sensual enchantment held dominion over all her being....