Was she incapable of passion—she who could rouse it to the danger-mark in others? He suspected that he was too gentle with her; but forcefulness brought memories of Mr. Dak. Though she made herself the dearest of companions, he knew that her feeling was no more than intense liking. He had failed to stir her.

Sometimes he thought that out of cowardice she was wilfully preventing herself from loving; sometimes that she was diverting the main stream of her affection in a wrong direction. She could still court separation from him without regret Fluffy had only to raise her finger and all his plans were scattered. Fluffy raised her finger very often now that Horace had left.

He despised himself for feeling jealous of a woman; but he was jealous. Fluffy knew that she was his rival. When they were all three together, she would amuse herself with half-sincere attempts to help him in his battle: “He looks at you so nicely. Why don’t you marry him?” But she robbed him remorselessly of Desire whenever it pleased her fancy. “Oh, these men!” she would sigh, shrugging her pretty shoulders. “Don’t you know, little Desire, that it does them good to keep them guessing?”

While the days slipped by unnumbered, he tried to persuade himself that Desire’s difficulty of winning made her the more worthy of his worship. He often thought of his father’s picture, buried beneath dusty canvasses in the stable at Eden Row. It was like that. He had stumbled into a Garden Enclosed, basking in lethargy, where Love peered in through the locked gate, and all things waited and slumbered. Then came the awakening, shattering in its earnestness.

It was three days before Christmas. The weather had turned to a sparkling coldness. Tall buildings looked like Niagaras of stone, poured from the glistening blueness of the heavens. In Madison Square and Columbus Circle Christmas trees had been set up. New York had a festive atmosphere—almost an atmosphere of childhood. Schools had broken up; streets were animated with laughing faces. Mistletoe and holly were in evidence. At frequent corners a Santa Claus was standing, white-bearded and red-coated, clattering his bell. Broadway and Fifth Avenue were thronged with matinÉe-girls and their escorts. They sprang up like flowers, tripping along gayly, snuggling their cheeks against their furs. Stores were Aladdin’s Caves, where money could make dreams come true. The spendthrift good-nature of the crowds was infectious.

All afternoon he had been shopping with her. “Our first Christmas together,” he kept saying. He invented plan after plan for making the season memorable. “When we’re old married people,” he told her, “we’ll look back. It’ll be something to talk about.”

“Only you mustn’t talk about it before your wife,” she warned him slyly.

“Why not?”

“She won’t like it, naturally. A Joan likes to think she was her Darby’s first and only.”

He drew her arm closer into his, and peeped beneath the brim of her hat, “Well, and wasn’t she?”

“Old stupid.”

Over his cheerfulness, though he tried to dispel it, hung a mist of melancholy. He was reminded of all the Christmases which his father and mother had helped to make glad. If this was the first he had spent with Desire, it was the first he had been absent from them. They would be lonely. His gain in happiness was in proportion to their loss. He felt guilty; it came home to him at every turn that his treatment of them had not been handsome.

Suddenly she bubbled into laughter. “You do look tragic Cheer up.” Perching her chin on her clasped hands, she leant towards him, “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“But there is. Is it anything that I’ve said or done? I’m quite willing to apologize. Tell me.” Her voice sank from high spirits till it nearly trembled into tears. “You promised always to be honest” Her hand stole out and caressed his fingers. “Our first Christmas together! Mee-ster Deek, you’re not going to make it sad after—after all our good times together?”

“I’m not making it sad.” He spoke harshly. His tone startled her. She stared at him, puzzled. For the first time he had failed to be long-suffering.

“Perhaps we’d better be going.”

Assuming an air of dignity, she slipped into her jacket and commenced to gather up her furs. Usually they enacted a comedy in which he hurried to her assistance and she made haste to forestall him. Instead, he beckoned for the bill.

“Perhaps we had,” he said shortly.

When the waiter had gone for the change, he began to relent. Fumbling in his breast-pocket, he pulled out the case and placed it on the table.

“I got this for you, not because it cost money, but because I thought you’d like it.”

She did not touch it. “Three days till Christmas. It isn’t time for presents yet.”

“Will you promise to accept it?”

“Why shouldn’t I? It’s a little brooch or somethings isn’t it? Let’s wait till Christmas Eve, anyway—till the day after to-morrow.”

“I want you to see it now.”

The waiter came back with the change. He picked it up without counting it, keeping his eyes on hers. She was fingering the case with increasing curiosity.

“But why now?”

“Because——-” He couldn’t explain to her.

Her face cleared and broke into graciousness. “You are funny. Well, if it means so much to you——” She examined the case first. “Tiffany’s! So that’s what you were doing when you left me—busting yourself? Shall I take just one peek at it?—Give me a smile then to show that we’re still friends—— All right—to please you.”

He twisted on his chair and gazed into the room. The moment while he waited was an agony. He was a prisoner waiting for the jury to give its verdict. All his future hung upon her words.

She gasped. “What a darling! Diamonds! Are they diamonds? They must be since they’re Tiffany’s. But it must have cost—-”

He swung round. Her glance fell. “I can’t take it.”

“You can. You’re going to. Here, let’s try it on—There!”

She fidgeted it round, watching the stones sparkle. She seemed fascinated, and wavered. Then she gathered her will-power: “No, Meester Deek. What kind of a girl d’you think I am?”

She tried to remove it; he stayed her. They sat in silence. It was very much as though they had quarreled—the queerest way to give and receive a present.

He picked up the empty case and slipped it in his pocket “I’ll carry it for you. What’ll we do next? A theatre?”

She glanced down at her green tweed suit. “Not dressy enough. Besides,” she consulted the watch on her wrist, “it’s nine.—Oh, I know; let’s visit Fluffy. We’ll catch her between the acts.”

Fluffy was leading lady in Who Killed Cock Robin? which was playing to crowded houses at The Belshazzar.

At the corner of Forty-second Street and Times Square he held her elbow gingerly to guide her through the traffic; on the further pavement he released it They walked separately. Then something happened which marked an epoch in their relations. Shyly she took his arm; previously it was he who had taken hers. She hugged it to her so that their shoulders came together. “Can’t you guess why I wanted to see Fluffy? I’m dying to show it to her.” Then, in a shamefaced little whisper: “Don’t think I’m ungrateful, Meester Deek. I never could say thanks. People—people who really like me understand.”

They came to The Belshazzar with its blazing sign, branding Janice Audrey on the night in fiery letters. There was something rather magnificent about marching in at the stage-entrance unchallenged. As they turned into the narrow passage which ran up beside the theatre, passers-by would halt to watch them, thinking they had discovered a resemblance in their faces to persons well known in stage-land. Even Teddy felt the thrill of it, though he was loth to own it, for these peeps behind the scenes cost him dearly; they invariably rekindled Desire’s ambitions to be an actress. She would talk of nothing else till midnight. The chances were that the rest of his evening would be spoilt; that was what usually happened if he allowed himself to be coaxed into the lady-peacock’s dressing-room. If the lady herself was before the footlights, he would have to hear Desire talking theatrical shop with her dresser. If she was present, he would have to sit ignored, listening to her accepting the grossest flatteries, till he seemed to himself to have become conspicuous by not joining in the chorus of adoration. In the seductive insincerity of that little nest, with its striped yellow wall-paper, its dressing-table littered with grease-paints, its frothy display of strewn attire, its perfumed atmosphere and its professional acceptance of the feminine form as a fact, he had spent many an unamiable hour.

As they passed the door-keeper, Desire smiled proudly. “We’re visiting Miss Audrey.” The man peered above his paper, recognized her and nodded. She glanced up at Teddy merrily, “Just as if we were members of the company.”

Breaking from him, she ran ahead up the stairs: “You wait here. I’ll let you know if it’s all right.”

In his mind’s eye he followed her. He imagined her flitting along the passage from which the dressing-rooms led off, on whose doors were pinned the names of their temporary occupants. He imagined the faded photographs of forgotten stars, gazing mournfully down on her youth from the walls. At the far end she would pause and tap, listening like an alert little bird for the answer. Then the door would open, and she would vanish. She was showing Fluffy her watch-bracelet now; they were vying with each other in their excited exclamations. He could picture it all.

It seemed to him that she had kept him waiting a long while—a longer time than usual. It might be only his impatience; time always hung heavy without her. Men passed—men who belonged to the management. They looked worried and evidently resented his presence. He returned their resentment, feeling that they were mistaking him for a stage Johnny.

At last he determined to wait no longer. As he climbed the stairs, he heard the muttering of voices and some one sobbing. All the doors of the dressing-rooms were open. The passage was crowded. The entire cast was there in their stage attire. Managers of various sorts were pushing their way back and forth. A newspaper man was being hustled out. Something might have happened to Desire. The disturbance was in Fluffy’s dressing-room. He elbowed his way to the front and peered breathlessly across the threshold.

Stretched on a couch was a slim boyish figure, in the costume of a Tyrolese huntsman. Her face was buried in her hands, her feet twitched one against the other and her shoulders shook with an agony of crying. The cap which she had been wearing had been tom off and hurled into a far corner. Her hair fell in a shining tide and gleamed in a golden pool upon the carpet. By the side of the couch her dresser stood, wringing her hands and imploring: “Now, Miss Audrey, this’ll never do. They’ve sent for Mr. Freelevy. You must pull yourself together. The curtain’s waiting to go up. It’ll be your call in a second.”

“Oh, go away—go away, all of you,” Fluffy wept “I don’t care what happens now. Nothing matters.”

Desire was kneeling beside her with her arms about her. She was crying too, dipping her lips into the golden hair. “Don’t, darling. You’re breaking my heart. Tell me. It may help.”

Simon Freelevy shouldered his way into the room. He was a stout, short man with a bald, shiny head. His hurry had made him perspire; he was breathing heavily.

“What’s all this?” he asked angrily. “Tantrums or what?”

Fluffy sat up. She looked pitiful as a frightened child. The penciling beneath her blue eyes made them larger than ever. She fisted her hands against her mouth to silence her sobs.

The dresser answered. “A cable was waiting for her. She read it after the first act It took her by surprise, sir. It was to tell her that Mr. Overbridge had married.”

“Sensible fellow.” Simon Freelevy took one look at Fluffy. In the quiet that had attended his entrance the roar of the impatient theatre, clamoring for the curtain to rise, could be heard. “She can’t go on,” he said brusquely. “She’s no more good to-night. Where’s her understudy?—Oh, youl Good girl—you got ready. Get back into the wings all of you.”

He drove them out like a flock of sheep, slamming the door contemptuously behind him.

Desire turned to Teddy. “Fetch a taxi. I can’t leave her to-night We’ll take her home to my apartment.”

As they drove through Columbus Circle the Christmas tree was illuminated at the entrance to the Park. The happiness which it betokened provoked another shower of tears from Fluffy. “It was cruel of him,” she wept, “cruel of him. I always, always intended—— You know I did, little Desire.”

She was like a hurt child; there was no consoling her. Her only relief seemed to be derived from repeating her wrongs monotonously. She kept appealing to Desire to confirm her assertions of the injustice that had been done her. Desire gathered her into her arms and drew her head to her shoulder. “Don’t cry, darling. He wasn’t worthy of you. There are thousands more men in the world.”

As soon as they had reached the apartment Fluffy said: “Let me go to bed. I want to cry my heart out.” In the hall as she bade Teddy good-night, she gazed forlornly from him to Desire: “You two, you’re very happy. You don’t know how happy. No one ever does until—until It ends.”

He watched them down the passage. He supposed he ought to go now. Instead, he went into the front-room and seated himself. He couldn’t tear himself away. He was hungry for Desire. He hadn’t known that she could be so tender. He yearned for some great calamity to befall him, that he might see her kneeling at his side and might feel her arms about him.

Finality was in the air. Horace’s example had startled him into facing up to facts; perhaps it had done the same for her. He felt that this was the psychologic crisis to which all his courtship had been leading. She cared for him, or she wouldn’t have accepted his present. Knowing her as he did, the very ungraciousness of her acceptance was a proof to him of how much she cared. And now this new happening I It had darted swiftly across their insecurity as the shadow of nemesis approaching. To-night her lips must give him his answer. She had said: “When I kiss you, Meester Deek, without your asking, you’ll know then.” They could drag on no longer. It wasn’t honorable to her, to himself, to his parents—it wasn’t fair to any of them. Like a stave of music her words sang in his memory, “And we’re about the right height, aren’t we?”

Twinkles wandered in; seeing that he was alone and that her services were not required, she wandered out. He got up restlessly. To kill time, he examined the little piles of books and set them in order. He picked up a boudoir-cap that she was making, pressing it to his lips because her hands had touched it. He smiled fondly; even in her usefulness she was decorative. She made boudoir-caps when buttons needed sewing on her gloves.

Whatever he did, the eyes of Tom watched him from the photograph on the piano. He had been hoping for months that she would remove it The eyes watched him in malicious silence. She had told him that Tom was a sort of brother. He had never disputed it, but he knew that no man could play the brother for long with such a girl. He wondered if Tom had found her lips more accessible, and whether she had ever kissed him in return.

It was getting late. Not quite the evening he had expected! Very few of his evenings were.

At a sound he turned. She was standing in the doorway, a wrapper clutched about her, her hair hanging long as at Glastonbury, her bare feet peeping out from bedroom slippers. She looked half-child, half-elf.

“Oh, it’s you. I thought you’d gone—been gone for hours.”

“Gone! How could I go? We didn’t say good-night.” He lowered his voice, copying her whisper. Everything seemed to listen in the quietness, especially Tom’s photograph.

He approached her. If she would be only a tenth as tender to him as she had been to Fluffy! He was quivering like a leaf. The mystic wind that blew through him was so gentle that it could only be seen, not heard. It seemed to fill the room with flutterings. She shook her head, tossing her hair clear of her shoulders. He halted. Then he seized her hands. They struggled to free themselves.

“You’re eating my heart out, Desire. I’m good for nothing. You must say yes. If you don’t love me, you at least like me. You like me immensely, don’t you? The other will come later.” His voice trembled with the need of her; it was more like crying. He tried to draw her to him; she clutched her wrap more tightly, and dodged across the threshold.

Something in him broke. “Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

She closed her eyes in dreamy denial. “Never?”

“How can I tell?”

“Then let me kiss you. You’ve let me do it so often. You’ll at least do that And—and it’s so nearly Christmas.”

“You’ve kissed me so many, many times. I don’t know why I allow it.” Her voice sounded infinitely weary.

He let go her hand. His face became ashen. “This can’t go on forever.”

“Shish! You’ll wake Fluffy.” She pressed her finger to her lip. “I know. It can’t go on forever. Don’t let’s talk about it.”

He turned slowly, and picked up his coat and hat. “You and I can talk of that or nothing.”

As he approached the hall, she slipped after him into the passage. With his hand on the latch he looked back, “Then you won’t let me kiss you?”

Her expression quickened into a bewitching smile. “You silly Meester Deek!” She glanced down at her gauzy attire. “How can I? You wouldn’t have seen me this way if it hadn’t been for an accident. Besides,” with a drooping of her head, “I’m so fagged; I don’t feel like kissing to-night.”

“If you loved me,” he said vehemently, “you’d let me kiss you, anyhow. You wouldn’t mind. You’d be glad. Why, you and I, the way we’ve been together, we’re as good as married.”

“Not as bad as that,” she murmured drowsily.

He opened the door. At the last moment she ran forward, holding out her hand. “You’re angry. Poor Meester Deek! You’re splendid when you’re angry. Cheer up. There are all the to-morrows.”

He could have taken her in his arms then. He would have taken her cruelly, crushing her to him. He feared himself. He feared the quiet. He feared her, lest directly he relented, she would repulse him. She lifted her hand part way to his mouth. He arrested it; it was her lips for which he was hungry—to feel them shuddering again beneath his pressure before love died. He hurried from her.

At last he had stirred her. He had wounded her pride. Tears gushed to her eyes, deepening their grayness. She stood gazing after him, dumbly reproachful.

As he entered the Brevoort the clerk handed him a letter. He glanced at the writing; it was from his mother. He waited till he was in his room before he tore the envelope.

“Aren’t you ever coming home!” [he read], “It makes us feel so old, living without you. What is it that’s keeping you? Until now I’ve not liked to suggest it. But isn’t it a girl? It can’t be the right one, Teddy, or you wouldn’t hide the news from your mother. When it’s the right one a boy comes running to tell her; he knows it’ll make her glad. But you must know it wouldn’t make me glad—so come back to where we’re so proud of you. If you cable that you’re coming, we’ll postpone our Christmas so that you can share it.”

And then, in a paragraph:

“I’ve bad news to tell you. The Sheerugs have lost all their money. Madame Josephine died suddenly; Duke Nineveh has stolen everything and decamped with a chorus-girl. Beauty Incorporated is exposed and exploded. The papers say it was a swindle. This’ll affect you financially, poor old chap.”