BOOK II

CHAPTER I

ANTIc.i.p.aTION

"Are you given to remembering dates, Elice?"

There had been a pause,--one of the inevitable, normal pauses that occur when two people who are intimate are alone and conversation drifts where it will. Into this particular void, without preamble, entered this question.

"Sometimes. Why?"

"Not always, then?"

"No. I haven't any particular tendency that way that I know of. Possibly I'm not yet old enough for it to develop."

"To be more specific, then, to-day is December the sixth." Darley Roberts' eyelids narrowed whimsically. "Does that particular date have any special significance, recall anything out of the ordinary to you?"

Elice Gleason glanced up from the four-leafed clover she was bringing to life on the sc.r.a.p of linen in her lap, and looked at her companion thoughtfully.

"From the way you come at me, point blank," she smiled, "I have no doubt it should. Your chance questions, I've discovered, always do have a string attached to them somewhere. But just at this particular moment I admit December the sixth recalls nothing in particular."

"Not even when I add, at approximately eight o'clock in the evening? It's that now. I've been consulting the timepiece over there."

"No; not even that. I'm more and more convinced it's a distinct lapse on my part; but again I'm compelled to confess incompetency. When did what happen at approximately eight P.M. on December the sixth?"

Darley Roberts stroked his great chin with reminiscent deliberation.

"On December sixth, at eight o'clock P.M., precisely one year ago," he explained minutely, "a certain man called on a certain young woman of his acquaintance for the first time. It was, I am reliably informed, a momentous occasion for him. Moreover he--Had you really forgotten, Elice?"

"Yes--the date."

"Strange. I hadn't. Perhaps, though, it meant more to me than to you."

He laughed peculiarly. "I fancy I didn't tell you at the time that it was the first call I'd ever made on a young woman in my life." He laughed again with tolerant amus.e.m.e.nt. "I was thirty-three years old then, too."

The girl drew a thread of green from a bundle of silk in her lap deliberately. "No; you never told me that," she corroborated.

The wrinkles gathering about Darley Roberts' eyes suddenly deepened, infallible precursor of the unexpected.

"By the way," he digressed, "I'm growing curious to know what you do with those things you're embroidering, those--"

"Lunch cloths?"

"That's it, lunch cloths. The present makes seven, one after the other, you've completed. I've kept count."

"Curious, you say?" The girl laughed softly. "And still you've never asked."

"No. I fancied there'd ultimately be an end, a variation at least; but it seems I was mistaken. Do you expect to keep them, as a man does a case of razors, one for each day of the week?"

Again the soft little amused laugh.

"Hardly. I sell them. There are five more in prospect--an even dozen."

"Oh. I wondered."

Another void; an equally abrupt return.

"To come back to the date," recalled the man, "I remembered it distinctly this morning when I tore the top leaf off the desk-pad. It stood out as though it were printed in red ink, like the date of a holiday. I--do I show signs of becoming senile--childish, Elice?"

"Not that I've noticed. You seem normal."

"Nor irresponsible--moonstruck--nothing of that kind?"

"No."

"I'm glad to hear it. I didn't know.... Somehow this morning the sight of that date made me do a thing I haven't done since--I don't know when. I had a consuming desire to celebrate."

The girl's head was bent low, the better to see her work.

"Yes?" she said.

Again the man stroked his chin, with the former movement of whimsical deliberation.

"Do you know what people down town, people I do business with, call me, Elice?" he asked.

"No."

"Never heard of 'old man' Roberts?"

"No," again.

"Well, that's me--old man Roberts--old man--thirty-four.... By the way, what do you call me, Elice?"

"Mr. Roberts," steadily.

"Not Darley; not once in all this last year?"

No answer.

"Not Darley--even once?"

"I think not."

The eyes of the man smiled, the eyes only.

"To return again, old man Roberts had a desire to celebrate. The date was on his brain. He didn't even take off his coat after he'd seen it--normally the old man works in his shirt-sleeves, you know--he just walked back from his private room into the general office. 'To-day's a holiday,' he said.