"What's that?" said Kedzie, hoping he was not going to begin big talk.

"Wisdom," said Ferriday. "A woman ought to be as wise as the serpent, but she ought to have the eyes of a dove. Your baby sweetness is worth a fortune on the screen if you have brains enough to manage it, and I fancy you have. Here's to you, Miss Anita Adair!"

He drank deep, but she only touched the brim. She saw that he was drinking too much--he had had several c.o.c.ktails while he waited for her to arrive. Kedzie felt that one of the two must keep a clear head. She found that ice-water was a good antidote for champagne.

When Ferriday sharply ordered the waiter to look to her gla.s.s she shook her head. When he finished the bottle and the waiter put it mouth down in the ice as an eloquent reminder Ferriday accepted the challenge and ordered another bottle. He was just thickened of tongue enough to say "boddle."

Kedzie spoke, quickly: "Please, no. I must go home. It's later than I thought, and--"

"And Mrs. Gilfoyle will wonder," Ferriday laughed. "That's right, my dear. You've got to keep good hours if you are going to succeethe on the screen. Early to bed, for you must early-to-rise. _Garcon, garcon, l'addition, s'il vous_ please."

While he was paying the bill Kedzie was thinking fleetly of her next problem. He would want to take her home in his car, and it would be just her luck to find her husband on the door-step. In any case, she was afraid that Ferriday would be sentimental and she did not want Ferriday to be sentimental just yet. And she would not tolerate a sentiment inspired or influenced by wine. Love from a bottle is the poorest of compliments.

Already she was a little disappointed in Ferriday. He was a great man, but he had his fault, and she had found him out. If he were going to be of use to her she must snub that vinous phase at once.

The cool air outside seemed to gratify Ferriday and he took off his hat while the carriage-starter whistled up his car. Now Kedzie said:

"Please, Mr. Ferriday, just put me in a taxicab."

"Nonsense! I'll take you home. I'll certainly take you home."

"No, please; it's 'way out of your way, and I--I'd rather--really I would."

Ferriday stared hard at her as if she were just a trifle blurred. He frowned; then he smiled.

"Why, bless your soul, if you'd rather I wouldn't oppose you, I wouldn't--not for worlds. But you sha'n't go home in any old cabby taxishab; you'll take my wagon and I'll walk. The walk will do me good."

Kedzie thought it would, too, so she consented with appropriate reluctance. He lifted her in and closed the door--then leaned in to laugh:

"Give my love to old Mrs. Gilfoyle. And don't fail to be at the shudio bright and early. We'll have to make sun while the hay shines, you know.

Good night, Miss Adair!"

"Good night, Mr. Ferriday, and thank you ever so much for the perfectly lovely evening."

"It has been l-l-lovely. Goo-ood night!"

The car swept away and made a big turn. She saw Ferriday marching grandiosely along the street, with his head bared to the cool moonlight.

She settled back and snuggled into the cushions, imagining the car her very own.

She left her glory behind her as she climbed the long stairs, briskly preparing her lies and her defensive temper for her husband's wrathful greeting.

He was not there.

CHAPTER IX

Kedzie had no sooner rejoiced in the fortunate absence of her husband than she began to worry because he was away. Where was he and with whom?

She sat by the window and looked up and down the street, but she could find none among the pedestrians who looked like her possessor. She forgot him in the beauty of the town--all black velvet and diamonds.

Once more she sat with her window open toward her Jerusalem and worshiped the holy city of her desire. That night at the Biltmore she was an ignorant country-town girl who had never had anything. Now she had had a good deal, including a husband. But, strangely, there was just as much to long for as before--more, indeed, for she knew more things to want.

As the scientist finds in every new discovery a new dark continent, in each atom a universe, so Kedzie found from each acquired desire infinite new desires radiating fanwise to the horizon and beyond.

At first she had wanted to know the town--now she wanted to be known by the town. Then her father stood in her way; now, her husband. She had eloped from her parents with ease and they had never found her again.

She had succeeded in being lost.

She did not want to be lost any more; but she was lost, utterly n.o.body to anybody that mattered. Now was her chance, but she could not run away from her husband and get famous without his finding her. If he found her he would spoil her fun and her fame. She did not know how many public favorites are married, how many matinee idols are managed by their wives. She had never heard of the prima donna's husband.

She fell asleep among her worries. She was awakened by the noisy entrance of her spouse. He was hardly recognizable. She thought at first that her eyes were bleary with sleep, but it was his face that was bleary. He was what a Flagg caricature of him would be, with the same merciless truth in the grotesque.

Kedzie had never seen him boozy before. She groaned, expressively, "My Gawd! you're pie-eyed."

He sang an old song, "The girl guessed right the very first time, very firstime, verfirstime."

He tried to take her into his arms. She slapped his hands away. He laughed and flopped into a chair, giggling. She studied him with almost more interest than repugnance. He was idiotically jovial, as sly as an idiot and as inscrutable.

Without waiting to be asked he began a recital of his chronicles. He was as evidently concealing certain things as boasting of others. Kedzie rather hoped he had done something to conceal, since that would be an atonement for her own subtleties.

"I have been in Bohemia," he said, "zhenuine old Bohemia where hearts are true and eyes are blue and ev'body loves ev'body else. Down there a handclasp is a pledzh of loyalty. There's no hypocrisy in Bohemia--not a dambit. No, sirree. The idle rish with their shn.o.bberies and worship of mere--mere someshing or oth' have no place in Bohemia, for in Bohemia hearsh are true and wine is blue and--"

"Oh, shut up!" said Kedzie.

"Tha.s.s way you're always repressin' me. You're a hopeless Philisterine.

But I have no intentions of shuttin' up, my darlin' Anita--Anita--Shh!

shh!"

He was hushing himself. He was very patently remembering something and conspicuously warning himself not to divulge it. Kedzie loathed him too much to care. Now that he was safely housed he ceased to interest her.

She went to bed. He spiraled into a chair to meditate his wickedness.

He felt that he was as near to being a hypocrite as was possible in Bohemia.

He had met two talented ladies at the dinner, one was a sculptress from Mr. Samuel Merwin's Washington Square and the other was a paintress from Mr. Owen Johnson's Lincoln Square. Neither lady had had any work accepted by the Academy or bought by a dealer. Both were consequently as fierce against intrenched art as Gilfoyle was against intrenched capital and literature.

They were there in the company of two writers. One of these could not get anything published at all except in the toy magazines, which paid little and late and died early. The other writer could get published, but not sold. Both were young and needed only to pound their irons on the anvil to get them hot, but they blamed the world for being cold to true art. In time they would make the sparks fly and would be in their turn a.s.sailed as mere blacksmiths by the next line of younger apprentices. They were at present in the same stage as any other new business--they were building up custom in a neighborhood of strangers.

But at present they were suppressed, all four, men and women; suppressed and smothered as next June's flowers and weeds are held back by the conspiracy of December's snows and the harsh criticisms of March.

The sculptress's first name was Marguerite and Gilfoyle longed to call her by it, after his second goblet of claret-and-water. He had a pa.s.sion for first names. He had the quick enthusiasm of a lawyer or an advertising-man for a new client. Before he quite realized the enormity of his perfidy he was pretending to compose a poem to Marguerite. He wrote busily on an old bill of fare which had already been persecuted by an artist or two. And he wrote his Anita poem over again in Marguerite's honor, _mutatis mutandis_.

Pretty maid, pretty maid, may I say Marguerita?

Your last name is sweet, but your first name is sweeter.

And so on to the bitter end.

He slipped the lyric to Marguerite and she read it with squeals of delight, while Gilfoyle looked as modest as such a genius could. The other girl had to read it, of course, while Gilfoyle tried to look unconscious. He was as successful as one is who tries to hold a casual expression for a photograph.

The other girl's reward was a shrug and the diluted claret of a "Very nice!" Gilfoyle said, "You're no judge or else you're jealous." The two men read it, and said, "Mush!" and "Slushgusher!" but Marguerite's eyes belonged to Gilfoyle the rest of the evening, also her hands now and then.