"Come," John said, as he took one from the tray, "I will tell you some news that will give you something to think about. I hope that you will be glad--I feel sure that you will. I want you to be the first to drink our healths--Louise's and mine!"

The gla.s.s slipped through her fingers and fell upon the carpet. She never uttered even an exclamation. John was upon his knees, picking up the broken gla.s.s.

"My fault," he insisted. "I am so sorry, Sophy. I am afraid some of the stuff has gone on your frock. Looks as if you'll have to take me out shopping. I'll ring for another c.o.c.ktail."

He rose to his feet and stepped toward the bell. Then it suddenly occurred to him that as yet she had not spoken. He turned quickly around.

"Sophy," he exclaimed, "what is the matter? Aren't you going to congratulate me?"

She was sitting bolt upright upon the couch, her fingers buried in the cushions, her eyes closed. He moved quickly across toward her.

"I say, Sophy, what's wrong?" he asked hastily. "Aren't you well?"

She waved him away.

"Don't touch me," she begged. "I went without my lunch--nearly missed the train, as it was. I was feeling a little queer when I came, and dropping that gla.s.s gave me a shock. Let me drink yours, may I?"

He handed it to her, and she drained its contents. Then she smiled up at him weakly.

"What a shame!" she said. "Just as you were telling me your wonderful news! I can scarcely believe it--you and Louise!"

John sat down beside her.

"Louise does not want it talked about for a day or two," he observed.

"We have not made any plans yet."

"Is Louise going to remain upon the stage?"

"Probably, if she wishes it," he replied; "but I want to travel first for a year or so, before we settle definitely upon anything. I did not think that you would be so much surprised, Sophy."

"Perhaps I am not really," she admitted. "One thinks of a thing as being possible, for a long time, and when it actually comes--well, it takes you off your feet just the same. You know," she added slowly, "there are no two people in this world so far apart in their ways as you and Louise."

"That is true from one point of view," he confessed. "From another, I think that there are no two people so close together. Of course, it seems wonderful to me, and I suppose it does to you, Sophy, that she should care for a man of my type. She is so brilliant and so talented, such a woman of this latter-day world, the world of which I am about as ignorant as a man can be. Perhaps, after all, that is the real explanation of it. Each of us represents things new to the other."

"Did you say that no one has been told yet--no one at all?"

"No one except Stephen," John a.s.sented. "That is why I went up to c.u.mberland, to tell him."

"You have not told the prince?" Sophy asked, dropping her voice a little. "Louise has not told him?"

"Not that I know of. Why do you ask?" John inquired, looking into Sophy's face.

"I don't know," she answered. "It just occurred to me. He and Louise have known each other for such a long time, and I wondered what he might have to say about it."

John laid his hands upon the poisonous thoughts that had stolen once more into his blood, and told himself that he had strangled them. He swept them away and glanced at his watch.

"Let's have some dinner before I change, down in the grill-room--in a quarter of an hour's time, say. I don't want to be at the theater before the second act."

Sophy hesitated. There was a hard feeling in her throat, a burning at the back of her eyes. She was pa.s.sionately anxious to be alone, yet she could not bring herself to refuse. She could not deny herself, or tear herself at once away from the close companionship which seemed, somehow or other, to have crept up between herself and John, and to have become the one thing that counted in life.

"I'd love to," she said, "but remember I've been traveling. Look at me!

I must either go home, or you must let me go into your room--"

"Make yourself at home," John invited. "I have three letters to write, and some telephone messages to answer."

Sophy lit another cigarette and strolled jauntily through his suite of rooms. When she was quite sure that she was alone, however, she closed the door behind her, dropped her cigarette, and staggered to the window.

She stood there, gazing down into an alleyway six stories below, where the people pa.s.sing back and forth looked like dwarf creatures.

One little movement forward! No one could have been meant to bear pain like this. She set her teeth.

"It would be so soon over!"

Then she suddenly found that she could see nothing; the people below were blurred images. A rush of relief had come to her. She sank into the nearest chair and sobbed.

x.x.xIII

The reception in honor of the little company of French tragedians, at which almost the whole of the English stage and a sprinkling of society people were present, was a complete success. Louise made a charming hostess, and Sir Edward more than ever justified his reputation for saying the right thing to the right person at the right moment. The rooms were crowded with throngs of distinguished people, who all seemed to have plenty to say to one another.

The only person, perhaps, who found himself curiously ill at ease was John. He heard nothing but French on all sides of him--a language which he read with some facility, but which he spoke like a schoolboy. He had been wandering about for more than an hour before Louise discovered him.

She at once left her place and crossed the room to where he was standing by the wall.

"Cheer up!" she begged, with a delightful smile. "I am afraid that you are being bored to death. Will you not come and be presented to our guests?"

"For goodness' sake, no!" John implored. "I have never seen one of them act, and my French is appalling. I am all right, dear. It's quite enough pleasure to see you looking so beautiful, and to think that I am going to be allowed to drive you home afterward."

Louise looked into a neighboring mirror, and gazed critically at her own reflected image. The lines of her figure, fine and subtle, seemed traced by the finger of some great sculptor underneath her faultlessly made white-satin gown. She studied her white neck and shoulders and her perfectly shaped head, seeking everywhere for some detail with which an impartial critic might find fault.

She had a curious feeling that at that precise moment she had reached the zenith of her power and her charm. Her audience at the theater had been wonderfully sympathetic, had responded with rare appreciation to every turn of her voice, to every movement and gesture. The compliments, too, which she had been receiving from the crowds who had bent over her fingers that night had been no idle words. Many distinguished men had looked at her with a light in their eyes which women understand so well--a light questioning yet respectful, which provokes yet begs for something in the way of response.

She was conscious, acutely conscious, of the atmosphere she had created around her. She was glorying in the subtle outward signs of it. She was in love with herself; in love, too, with this delightful new feeling of loving. It would have given her more joy than anything else in the world, in that moment of her triumph, to have pa.s.sed her arm through John's, to have led him up to them all, and to have said:

"After all, you see, I am a very simple sort of woman. I have done just the sort of simple thing that other women do, and I am glad of it--very glad and very happy!"

Her lips moved to the music of her thoughts. John leaned toward her.

"Did you say anything?" he asked.

"You dear stupid, of course I did not! Or if I did, it was just one of those little whispers to oneself which mean nothing, yet which count for so much. Can I not do anything to make you enjoy yourself more? I shall have to go back to my guests now. We are expecting a royal personage, and those two dears who keep so close to my side do not speak a word of English."

"Please go back, dear," John begged promptly. "It was nice of you to come at all. And here's Sophy at last, thank goodness! Now I am all right."

She laid her fingers upon his arm.

"You must take me back to my place," she said. "Then you can go and talk nonsense to Sophy. I won't even ask you what she said when you told her the news. I suppose you did tell her?"