"I guess, Bobby, I'll be running along," she announced.
"Grace," he said earnestly, "it's good to know that from this time on you are a star."
"Yes, isn't it?" she answered. "I'm a real ash-trash now. No--don't bother to see me down. Mr. Deprayne will put me into the taxi'."
Outside the threshold she paused to thrust her head back into the room, and to laugh gaily as she shouted in the slang of the street:
As I climbed the creaking stairs again, I was pondering the question of contentment. Here were three of us. One had raked success out of the fire of failure and had written what promised to be the season's dramatic sensation. One had earned the right to read her name, nightly, in Broadway's incandescent roster. I myself had been preserved from cannibal flesh-pots. All of us were seemingly brands snatched from the burning, and all of us were deeply miserable. I wondered if the fourth was happy; the woman who had once said to Maxwell the things he now vainly longed to hear? And She--the lady I had never seen; what of her?
I found the author gazing off with a far-away reminiscence which was mostly pain. The taxi' was whirring under the arch, but he had already forgotten it and its occupant.
"Do you want to unbosom yourself, Bobby?" I questioned.
"To you?" he inquired with a smile. "You're a woman-hater."
But a moment later he came over and laid his hand affectionately on my shoulder, fearing he had offended me.
"I guess, old man," he explained, "there's no balm in post-mortems. I loved her, that's all, and I still do."
"She is now Mrs. William Clay Weighborne of Lexington. It's a prettier name than Fanny Maxwell, and looks better on a check. I was number three, that's all."
"Mrs. Who?" I repeated, in astonishment. "You don't mean the wife of W. C. Weighborne?"
"Why?" he asked suddenly. "Is the gentleman an acquaintance of yours?"
"Since this morning, yes. He is even a business associate."
"How you birds of a financial feather do flock around the same pabulum," he coolly observed.
"I was rather well impressed with him," I admitted idiotically enough. "He seemed a very decent sort of chap."
Maxwell lighted a cigarette. His voice was a trifle unenthusiastic as he replied.
A few days later I arrived at Lexington and Weighborne, who met me at the station with his car, announced that I was to go to his home on the Frankfort turnpike. But at this arrangement I balked. Despite a certain curiosity to see his wife, the lady who had left such a melancholy impress on the heart of my friend, there were considerations which outweighed curiosity. My own peculiar afflictions bore more heavily on me than those of my acquaintances and I had no yearning for the effort of socializing.