“Yes, I remember. But I found it was not necessary and I am glad now it was not. I only wish you had wired. If I dined down town it was only because it is less appalling than the house when you are gone.”
Mrs. Nevius smiled with bright frostiness.
“But you have had Jenny all the time. Dear me, Carol, what do you want? A seraglio?”
And as though in challenge, she raised a fan and unfurled it with a sudden click.
Nevius shook his head.
“It is not nice of you to speak that way. It’s not like you either. You know that I want no one but yourself.” As he spoke he bent toward her, but before he could touch her, Mrs. Nevius moved, and shoving him gently enough aside, sat upright, smiling still.
“Listen to me, Carol, how long have we been married? Nearly seven years. Now, tell me, don’t you think that in seven years a woman may get just a little tired of that sort of thing.” In her great blue eyes interrogations floated, and in the corners of her mouth was a candor which would have delighted Greuze. “For I am. And if you are not,” she added with a gesture so wide that it took in all New York, “there are so many other women who would like nothing better.”
Nevius was on his feet. Into his face had come a look which his wife had seen before, and at which, mentally, she retreated. But before he could speak, she was at his side, her arms about his neck, her lips on his.
“Dear,” she murmured. “Couldn’t you see that I was jesting. Don’t you know it, Carol? Don’t you know that if I thought you could look at another woman it would break my heart?”
With both hands on his shoulders she held him a little from her, and with a pathos that seemed charged with love and grief eternal, gazed into his face.
“Tell me?”
“I suppose so,” he answered, though with a thoroughly masculine sigh. “But then, whatever I may do or leave undone, you come always first.”
Mrs. Nevius’ eyes lighted visibly. She led him back to where they had sat and for a while very sweetly discussed with him matters of common interest. At last she stood up again, declaring that it was late.
“I am going,” she announced. “Are you coming presently?”
Nevius led her to the door and drew the portiere that she might pass.
“And Carol, when you come don’t forget the gas.”
The portiere fell again. Nevius returned to the Post. There was an editorial which he read unheedingly. From a cablegram he learned of an epidemic in the Orient. From another that an English duke had died without an heir. A paragraph in the financial column interested him. There was a statement which concerned his own interests. He got out a notebook and studied some figures; an idea in connection with them occurred to him, and at the desk he jotted down some memoranda which he recopied and tearing up the draft put the copy in his pocket. He looked at the clock, the half hour which he had given himself had gone and he went upstairs, the gas forgot.
The following afternoon, on returning to the house, he went directly to his own room. At the office he had found that the memoranda were not in his pocket. In ordinary circumstances he would have recalled the substance of any such paper unaided, but in this instance subsequent episodes had driven the purport from his mind. Not in his bedroom, however, nor in his dressing-room, was the paper to be found. He questioned the housemaid; she had no information to impart. Where is the housemaid that ever had? After all, he reflected, it was not a matter of life or death, and if it were lost, was it not as Hilda had often said, because he was fiendish in his carelessness? And he was about to give the matter up when he remembered that he had first made a draft which he had torn and thrown aside. There was a chance that the housemaid had left the scrapbasket undisturbed and, presently, after getting into evening dress, he went to the drawing room below.
The lights were lit, on the table was the Post; there, against the wall, was the escritoire of lacquer work and brass on which he had written, and beside it a basket of beribboned velvet. One glance was sufficient, the contents had not been touched, and, emptying them, he began to arrange them on the desk. Yes, they were all there. In a moment he had them not only in proper position, but with three pieces of paper to spare. These he would have brushed away, but something on one of them caught his eye—Dearest J
—, written in his wife’s hand. But what preceded the adjective, or what had followed the J, there was nothing to tell. The second scrap was larger, and on it was written he has not go—
; on the third were two words and a fraction that must have come from the middle of a sentence—can’t see y
—.
Nevius stared at these little papers and, as he stared, all interest in his own memoranda evaporated.
He looked again in the basket. It was quite empty. Whether the other bits of that letter had fallen, not in the basket, but on the floor, and had then been swept away, he did not try to determine. Enough remained. The J, of course, was Ablaut—Jimmy, as he was familiarly called. As for the rest, a child could have supplied the missing words—He has not gone to Chicago; I can’t see you tonight
.
And this was Hilda! For a while he sat, staring at the scraps, conscious only that he was suffering, endeavoring even to delude himself into a belief that some explanation might set this horrible thing aright. But little by little,
