第13章

The idea was distinctly disagreeable: he did not want the woman he adored to think he could forget her for a moment.

And by this time he had fully persuaded himself that a letter from her was awaiting him, and had even gone so far as to imagine that its contents might annul the writer's telegraphed injunction, and call him to her side at once...

V

At the porter's desk a brief "Pas de lettres" fell destructively on the fabric of these hopes.

Mrs.Leath had not written--she had not taken the trouble to explain her telegram.Darrow turned away with a sharp pang of humiliation.Her frugal silence mocked his prodigality of hopes and fears.He had put his question to the porter once before, on returning to the hotel after luncheon; and now, coming back again in the late afternoon, he was met by the same denial.The second post was in, and had brought him nothing.

A glance at his watch showed that he had barely time to dress before taking Miss Viner out to dine; but as he turned to the lift a new thought struck him, and hurrying back into the hall he dashed off another telegram to his servant:

"Have you forwarded any letter with French postmark today?

Telegraph answer Terminus."

Some kind of reply would be certain to reach him on his return from the theatre, and he would then know definitely whether Mrs.Leath meant to write or not.He hastened up to his room and dressed with a lighter heart.

Miss Viner's vagrant trunk had finally found its way to its owner; and, clad in such modest splendour as it furnished, she shone at Darrow across their restaurant table.In the reaction of his wounded vanity he found her prettier and more interesting than before.Her dress, sloping away from the throat, showed the graceful set of her head on its slender neck, and the wide brim of her hat arched above her hair like a dusky halo.Pleasure danced in her eyes and on her lips, and as she shone on him between the candle-shades Darrow felt that he should not be at all sorry to be seen with her in public.He even sent a careless glance about him in the vague hope that it might fall on an acquaintance.

At the theatre her vivacity sank into a breathless hush, and she sat intent in her corner of their baignoire, with the gaze of a neophyte about to be initiated into the sacred mysteries.Darrow placed himself behind her, that he might catch her profile between himself and the stage.He was touched by the youthful seriousness of her expression.In spite of the experiences she must have had, and of the twenty-four years to which she owned, she struck him as intrinsically young; and he wondered how so evanescent a quality could have been preserved in the desiccating Murrett air.As the play progressed he noticed that her immobility was traversed by swift flashes of perception.She was not missing anything, and her intensity of attention when Cerdine was on the stage drew an anxious line between her brows.

After the first act she remained for a few minutes rapt and motionless; then she turned to her companion with a quick patter of questions.He gathered from them that she had been less interested in following the general drift of the play than in observing the details of its interpretation.

Every gesture and inflection of the great actress's had been marked and analyzed; and Darrow felt a secret gratification in being appealed to as an authority on the histrionic art.

His interest in it had hitherto been merely that of the cultivated young man curious of all forms of artistic expression; but in reply to her questions he found things to say about it which evidently struck his listener as impressive and original, and with which he himself was not, on the whole, dissatisfied.Miss Viner was much more concerned to hear his views than to express her own, and the deference with which she received his comments called from him more ideas about the theatre than he had ever supposed himself to possess.

With the second act she began to give more attention to the development of the play, though her interest was excited rather by what she called "the story" than by the conflict of character producing it.Oddly combined with her sharp apprehension of things theatrical, her knowledge of technical "dodges" and green-room precedents, her glibness about "lines" and "curtains", was the primitive simplicity of her attitude toward the tale itself, as toward something that was "really happening" and at which one assisted as at a street-accident or a quarrel overheard in the next room.

She wanted to know if Darrow thought the lovers "really would" be involved in the catastrophe that threatened them, and when he reminded her that his predictions were disqualified by his having already seen the play, she exclaimed: "Oh, then, please don't tell me what's going to happen!" and the next moment was questioning him about Cerdine's theatrical situation and her private history.On the latter point some of her enquiries were of a kind that it is not in the habit of young girls to make, or even to know how to make; but her apparent unconsciousness of the fact seemed rather to reflect on her past associates than on herself.

When the second act was over, Darrow suggested their taking a turn in the foyer; and seated on one of its cramped red velvet sofas they watched the crowd surge up and down in a glare of lights and gilding.Then, as she complained of the heat, he led her through the press to the congested cafe at the foot of the stairs, where orangeades were thrust at them between the shoulders of packed consommateurs and Darrow, lighting a cigarette while she sucked her straw, knew the primitive complacency of the man at whose companion other men stare.

On a corner of their table lay a smeared copy of a theatrical journal.It caught Sophy's eye and after poring over the page she looked up with an excited exclamation.