"Good-by, honey."

They had to embrace. Their arms went out about each other and clasped behind each other's backs. Then some impulse moved them to a fierce clench of desperate sorrow. They were embracing their dead loves, the corpses that lay dead in these alienated bodies. It was an embrace across a grave, and they felt the thud of clods upon their love.

They gasped with the pity of it, and Kedzie's eyes were reeking with tears and Gilfoyle's lips were shivering when they wrenched out of that lock of torment.

He caught her back to him and kissed her salt-sweet mouth. Her kiss was brackish on his lips as life was. She felt a kind of a.s.sault in the fervor of his kiss, but she did not resist. He was a stranger who sprang at her from the dark, but he was also very like a poet she had loved poetically long, long ago.

Then they wrung hands and called good-bys and he caught up his suit-case and rushed through the door.

She hung from the window to wave to him as he ran down the street to the Subway, pausing now and again to wave to her vaguely, then stumbling on his course.

At last she could not see him, whether for the tears or for the distance, and she bowed her head on her lonely sill and wept.

She had a splendid cry that flushed her heart clean as a new whistle.

She washed her eyes with fine cold water and half sobbed, half laughed, "Well, that's over."

CHAPTER XI

Charity Coe Cheever was making less progress with her amateur movie-show than Kedzie with her professional cinematic career.

Charity telephoned to ask Jim Dyckman to act, but he proved to be camera-shy and intractable.

She had difficulties with all her cast. It was impossible to satisfy the people who were willing to act with the roles they were willing to a.s.sume.

Charity was lunching at the Ritz-Carlton with Mrs. Noxon when she saw Jim Dyckman come in with his mother. Mrs. Noxon left Charity and went over to speak to Mrs. Dyckman. So Charity beckoned Jim over and urged him to accept the job of impresario.

He protested, but she pleaded for his help at least on an errand or two.

"Jim, I want you to go up to the studio of these people and find this great man Ferriday and get him to promise to direct for us. And by the way, that little girl you pulled out of the pool, you know--well, they promised to get her a job at the studio. You look her up and find out how she's doing--there's a darling."

He shook his head, resisting her for once, and answered:

"Go to the devil, Charity darling. You won't let me love you, so I'll be cussed if I'll let you get me to working for you. I've had you bad and I'm trying to get well of you. So let me alone."

That was how Peter Cheever, talking to the headwaiter at the head of the stairs, saw his wife and Jim Dyckman with their heads together at a table. He wanted to go over and crack a water-bottle over Dyckman's head. He did not do it, for the excellent reason that Zada L'Etoile was at his side. She had insisted on his taking her there "to lunch with the bunch," as she expressed it.

She also saw Charity and Jim and Cheever's sudden flush of rage. She felt that the way was opening for her dreams to come true. She was so happy over the situation that she helped Cheever out of the appalling problem before him.

He did not know how to go forward or how to retreat. He could think of nothing to say to the headwaiter who offered him his choice of tables.

Zada caught his elbow and murmured in her very best voice just loud enough for the headwaiter's benefit:

"Mr. Cheever, I'm so sorry--but I'm feeling dizzy. I'm afraid I shall faint if I don't get out in the air. It's very close in here."

"It is very close, madam," said the headwaiter, and he helped to support her down the steps quietly and deferentially, just as if he believed it.

Zada and Cheever thought they were escaping from a crisis, but they were drifting deeper and deeper into the converging currents. When they were safe in the motor outside Zada was proud.

"Some get-away, that?" she laughed.

"Wonderful!" said Cheever. "I didn't know you had so much social skill."

"You don't know me," she said. "I'm learning! You'll be proud of me yet."

"I am now," he said. "You're the most beautiful thing in the world."

"Oh, that's old stuff," she said. "Any cow can be glossy. But I'm going in for the real thing, Peterkin. I've cut out the c.o.c.ktails and I don't dance with anybody but you lately. Have you noticed that? It's the quiet life and the nice ways for me. Do you mind?"

"It's very becoming" he said. "Anything for a novelty."

Yet he liked her surprisingly well in this phase. She had been cutting down his liquor, too. She had been cutting down his extravagances. She had even achieved the height of denying herself luxuries--one of the surest and least-trodden short-cuts to a man's heart--a little secret path he hardly knows himself.

The affair of Zada and Cheever was going the normal course. It had lost the charm of the wild and wicked--through familiarity; and it was tending to domestication, as all such moods do if nothing interrupts them. There are all sorts of endings to such illicit relations: most of them end with the mutual treachery of two fickle creatures; some of them end with bitter grief for one or the other or both; some of them end in crime, or at least disgrace; and some of them finish, with disconcerting immorality, in an inexcusable respectability.

The improvement in Zada's mind and heart was, curiously, the most dangerous thing in the world for Cheever. If she had stayed noisy and promiscuous and bad, he would have tired of her. But she was growing soft and homey, gentle as ivy, and as hard to tear away or to want to tear away. After all, marriage is only the formalizing of an instinct that existed long before--exists in some animals and birds who mate without formality and stay mated without compulsion.

When Zada and Cheever had escaped from the Ritz-Carlton they took lunch at another restaurant. Zada was childishly proud of her tact and of Cheever's appreciation. But afterward, on the way "home"--as she called what other people called her "lair"--she grew suddenly and deeply solemn.

"So your wife is with Dyckman again," she said. "It looks to me like a sketch."

Cheever flushed. He hated her slang and he did not accept her conclusion, but this time he did not forbid her to mention his wife. He could hardly do that when her tact had saved him and Charity from the results of their double indiscretion and the shame of amusing that roomful of gossips.

Zada misunderstood his silence for approval; so she spoke her thoughts aloud:

"If that He and She business goes on I suppose you'll have to divorce the lady."

"Divorce Charity!" Cheever gasped. "Are you dotty?"

That hit Zada pretty hard, but she bore it. She came back by another door.

"I guess I am--nearly as dotty as she is about Dyckman. First thing you know she'll be trying to get free herself. What if she asks you for a divorce?"

"I'd like to see her!"

"You mean you wouldn't give her her freedom?"

"Not in a thousand years."

He was astounded at the sepulchral woe of Zada's groan. "O Lord, and I thought--oh--you don't love me at all then! You never really loved me--really! G.o.d help me."

Cheever wondered what Zada would smash first. He hoped it would not be the window of the car. He hoped he could get her safely indoors before the smashing began.

He did. She was a grim and murky storm-cloud full of tornado when they crossed the pavement and the vestibule of the apartment-house and went up in the elevator.

But once inside the door, her breast began to heave, her nostrils to quiver, her fingers to work. Her maid came to take her hat, and paled to see her torment. Zada gave her her things and motioned her away. She motioned her four or five times. The maid had needed only one motion.