He tried to think of Fran again, and she remained a floating pale young face that outside his window kept pace in midair with the plane. But for a time she was only that.
They ran through the thundershower into rough air. They swooped upward, they fell a hundred feet—the sensation was precisely as in a dropping express elevator, which leaves one’s stomach two floors above—they rocked and quivered like a dory in high seas.
The business man, who had uninterestedly kept up his typing all through the storm, quietly rose and was very sick in a little paper bag. At the sight, the agreeable philanthropist with the cognac was sicker, much sicker. And Sam Dodsworth wanted to be sick, and was distressed because he couldn’t be.
For an hour and more they were shaken thus, helpless as dice in a box, and when with ineffable gratitude they circled down toward the flying-field at Dortmund, Sam saw that there was another thundershower coming.
Had Fran or Tub Pearson been there to observe him, he might not have had the courage to admit that he hadn’t the courage to go on to Berlin by plane, and it was hard enough in the presence of that rather demanding censor, Sam Dodsworth, but as they delicately touched the ground and taxied along—the aeroplane as innocent and demure as though it had never thought of such insane capering a mile in air—Sam determined, “Well, we’ll call that enough for a starter, and go on by train!”
Though he reeled a little with land-sickness when he stepped out, he beamed with idiotic bliss on the recovered earth, the beautifully safe and solid earth.
There were taxicabs waiting at the flying-field, but it came to Sam that he did not know the German for even “station” or “train.” In Berlin, he had depended on Fran. He looked disconsolately at the driver of the taxi in which a porter had set his bag, and grunted, “Berlin? Vagon? Berlin?”
“Surest t’ing you know, boss,” said the taxi-driver. “Train for Berlin. Well, how’s the folks back in the States?”
Sam said the inevitable.
“Was I there? Say, don’t make me laugh! I was born in Prussia but I was twenty-six years in Philly and K.C., and then I come back here, like a boob, and I got caught by the army, and don’t let nobody tell you that was any nice, well-behaved war, either! Jump in, boss.”
On the Berlin train, Sam forgot Fran for three minutes, in anger at himself for having failed to go on by aeroplane. It betrayed him as irresolute and growing old. Was he soft? He determined that the coming autumn, with Fran or without, he would make another canoe trip in Canada; he would live sparsely, sleep on the ground, carry on the portage, paddle all day long, and make himself shoot the worst rapids. Yes! With Fran or without—
But it must be with! Surely Fran could not withstand the new passion he was bringing to her from his Paris venture.
His train reached Berlin just before midnight.
At the hotel he seized his suitcase without waiting for the doorman, and pounded into the lobby.
“My wife in?—Mr. Dodsworth, suite B7,” he demanded, at the desk.
“I think the lady must be out, sir. The key is here,” said the clerk.
Dismally, Sam followed the boy with his bag to the elevator.
He sent the key back to the desk. He told himself that he did so because he was tired and might be asleep before she returned.
She was not in the suite. It smelled of her, shouted of her. She had spilled a little pink powder on the glass cover of her toilet-table; on the turned-back bed was her nightgown with the Irish lace; a half-finished letter to Emily was on the desk in the sitting-room; and these shadows of her made her absence the more glaring. From midnight till half-past two he sat waiting for her, reading magazines, and all his furious and simple-minded excitement grew cold minute by minute.
At half-past two he heard laughter in the corridor. Hating himself for it, yet quite unable to resist, he sprang up, turned off the lights in the sitting-room, and stood in the dark bedroom, just beyond the door.
He heard the door opening; heard Fran bubbling, “Yes, you can come in for a moment. But not long. Poo’ lil Fran, she is all in! What an orchestra that was! I could have danced till dawn!”
And Kurt: “Oh, you darling—darling!”
“Good evening,” said Sam, from the bedroom door, and Fran sobbed, once, quickly.
“Just got back from Paris.” Sam strode into the sitting-room, turned on the lights, stood there feeling clumsy and thick, wishing he had not been melodramatic.
“Oh, Sam, I am so glad you got back safe!” cried Kurt. “Fran and I have been dancing. Now I vill go home, and tomorrow I ring you up about luncheon.”
He glanced at Fran, hesitated as though he wanted to say something, bowed, and was gone. Fran glared at Sam with lip-biting hatred. Sam begged:
“Dear, I came back so quickly—listen, dear, I flew—because I couldn’t live without you! I’m not angry that Kurt and you were out so late—”
“Why should you be!” She tossed her gold and crimson evening wrap on the couch.
“Dear! Listen! This is serious! I’ve come back to you, willing to do everything I can to make you happy. I adore you. You know that. You’re everything I have. Only we’ve got to cut out this nonsense of being homeless adventurers and go home—”
“And that’s your idea of ‘making me happy’! And now you listen—to repeat your favorite phrase! I love Kurt, and Kurt loves me, and I’m going to marry him! No matter what it costs me! We decided it tonight. And all I can say is I’m glad Kurt was too much of a gentleman to punch your head, as he probably wanted to, when
