Polly Pendleton! Polly Pendleton! David Joslin knew not how many times the name stood there in print. That a team of vaudeville artists had grown into a certain vogue in the city; that this vogue had become, for one of the performers, a sort of reputation; that a concert singer had grown into being something of an actress, and the actress into some sort of a star heading a company of her own; that this star and her company—whether for reasons of success or lack of success—had left the city to tour “the provinces”—David Joslin knew none of these things. All he knew, or cared to know, or could understand, was that without doubt she was here! She, the _corpus delicti_ of his sin!
As the criminal will return to the very place of his crime, so now David Joslin found his feet going where he did not list. There came into his soul a great recklessness. He forgot the occupation of his last two years, forgot the long road before him. Independence, prodigality, seized him as fully as it might any gilded youth. So, since prodigality also is a wholly relative thing, David Joslin bought him a ticket to the theater that night, repaired to a nearby restaurant, and ate what was to him the most expensive meal of all his life.
No longer the happy wayfarer, but an anxious, downcast and distraught man, on his soul a shadow, he found his way to his seat—his first time in any actual theater. The whirl of it all, the light, the warmth, the color, the music, at first were things rather of torture to him. Where was she?
But presently she came, bowing, smiling, light-footed—it was she, her very self! Yes, these were her eyes, dark and large as ever. Her little mouth, turned up a-corner, was as sweet as ever. Her dark hair curled as it did that other time. Her straight young figure was the same, with all its tender curves. Above all, her frank smile, her compelling air of comradery, were just the same as then, that time, two years ago.
She had the same little habit of balancing up and down on her toes, impatient for the music to give her her cue. Her little chuckling laugh of sheer enjoyment in herself and in life was just the same. She was still the very spirit of life and joy she had been yonder, two years ago—two centuries ago it seemed to David Joslin! Then he had been another man. And now—he was again that other man!