“Why should you concern yourself about my fantastic affairs? They merely belong to dreamland--to the twilight and the stillness. They have no existence in the living world.”
“If I thought so, should I be sitting in the twilight and the stillness listening to you?” she asked. “Or even if I did, may I not enter into dreamland too for a few little minutes before the gates are closed to me forever? Why should you want to shut me out of it? Do you think much love has come my way? Yours are the only lips I have ever heard speak of it.”
“Morland loves you,” said Jimmie, tremulously.
The door opened. The electric light was switched on, showing two pale, passion-drawn faces, and Connie Deering brought her sweet gaiety into the room.
“If I had known you two were sitting in the dark like this, I should have come up earlier. Is n't it nice, Norma, to have Jimmie back again?”
The spell was broken. Norma gave an anxious look at the clock and fled, after hurried farewells.
The mistress of the house arched her pretty eyebrows as she returned to Jimmie.
“Connie--” He cleared his throat. “You have kept my secret?”
“I have done my best. God knows I have done my best.”
He sat down, took up a book and began to turn the leaves idly. Connie knelt down before the fire and put on a fresh log. This done, she came to his side. He took her hand and looked up into her face.
“I have n't thanked you, Connie. I do with all my heart.”
She smiled at him with an odd wistfulness.
“You once thanked me in a very pretty manner,” she said. “I think I deserve it again.”
CONNIE DEERING was dining that Sunday evening with some friends at the Carlton, an engagement which had caused her to decline an invitation to the Hardacres'. The prospect, however, for once did not appeal to her pleasure-loving soul. She sighed as she stepped into her brougham, and wished as she drove along that she were sitting at home in the tea-gown and tranquillity harmonious with a subdued frame of mind. Problems worried her. What had passed between Norma and Jimmie? Ordinary delicacy had forbidden her questioning, and Jimmie had admitted her no further into his confidence. In that she was disappointed. When a sentimental woman asks for a kiss, she expects something more. She was also half ashamed of herself for asking him to kiss her. A waspish little voice within proclaimed that it was not so much for Jimmie's sake as for her own; that her lifelong fondness for Jimmie had unconsciously slid on to the rails that lead to absurdity. She drew her satin cloak tightly around her as if to suffocate the imp, and returned to her speculation. Something had happened--of that there was no doubt--something serious, agitating. It could be read on both their faces. Had she, who alone knew the hearts of each, done right in bringing them together? What had been her object? Even if a marriage between them had not been too ludicrous for contemplation, it would not have been fair towards her cousin Morland to encourage this intrigue. She vowed she had been a little fool to meddle with such gunpowdery matters. And yet she had acted in all innocence for Jimmie's sake. It was right for Norma to be friends with him again. It was monstrous he should suffer. If he could not marry the woman he loved, at least he could have the happiness of knowing himself no longer a blackened wretch in her eyes. But then, Norma had taken it into her head to love him too. Had she done right? Her thoughts flew round in a vicious circle of irritatingly small circumference, occasionally flying off on the tangent of the solicited kiss.