Chapter V

He realized fully the significance of the extreme to which his course had brought him. If he might only talk to Crowley; if he might only tell him everything, how like a cad he felt, what a cad he believed himself to be, he must sense a deep relief. But would Crowley understand; could he understand?

He smiled at the thought the question prompted. Poor old Crowley--Meister Dryasdust--he understand a situation so delicate--so exquisitely delicate? It was absurd. Houston laughed aloud; but the laughter died at once and was like ashes on his lips.

He had not deceived Florence; not wilfully; though perhaps in the end it was as though he had. But now the thought that he had not consoled him. Still she had his promise. He had hers as well, to be sure, and in his present state of mind he only wished that she might be as willing as he to forget--he could not _think_, forgive. At the conjecture his pride suffered a shock. Still, if it were only true--if there were even a remote possibility of truth in the circumstance he imagined--that she might have undergone a change; that she might have awakened; that she might have--drifted away. He was coldly analytical enough _now_, to turn back a year and hear himself, as he was _then_, being told by her that she had erred, had made a dreadful _faux pas_ of the whole business.

A grim smile curved his lips as the situation presented itself more clearly to his mind. He snapped away his cigarette impatiently.

Leaving his room an hour before he had felt cool-headed enough, but now he experienced a growing nervousness with each step he took. It was just such a day as the one on which they had canoed down the river and the promises had been exchanged. Would it not be well, perhaps, he considered, to propose another little voyage, and, perhaps, on the very shelf of rock where they had spread their luncheon--a dainty luncheon it was, he remembered--tell her? He put the thought away at once as absurdly theatrical.

No, there was but one thing to do--to go to her, to go to her now, and, like a man, _tell_ her. It would be over with in half an hour--no longer, surely, he thought--and then--how good the air would taste, how blue the sky would seem.

He had not noticed where his steps were leading him, but now that a determination to act in the course left open to him had formed, set, and hardened in his mind, he lifted his eyes and looked about him.

He was approaching a corner. It was a very familiar corner. There on the left, ridiculously close to the sidewalk, was the brown house from the lilac bush in the scant front yard of which he and Florence had often, of an evening, stolen armfuls of the fragrant blossoms. A street car dragged along, its one flat wheel thumping, thumping, thumping, with a deadly sort of iteration. Standing there, he lighted another cigarette. When would he be here again, he mused. Perhaps in five years he might come back to a class reunion. Five years would bring many changes, many confusing changes. The lilac bush, for instance, might not be there in the front yard of the brown house. He recalled the changes the four years he had lived in Ann Arbor had brought to the vicinity of his freshman rooming-house. Come to think of it, he could not even now, familiar as he was with the town, remember whether that house stood in Ingalls or Thayer Streets. He could find the place, certainly; that is, he might locate it after a bit, but----

"Houston, you're a fool!"

He upbraided himself aloud, unconsciously. Then, flinging away his half-burned cigarette, he turned the corner and walked briskly down the street.

The maid admitted him and he waited in the little round room. The shades were low and the place was filled with shadows, shadows that made the close walls seem very far apart, and the teak wood bookcase quite remote. To satisfy himself of the illusion Houston thrust one foot forward until it touched the lowest shelf. He settled back among the cushions on the circular seat, then, quite satisfied.

He heard the soft, cool swish of skirts on the stairs and the next instant the _portières_ parted and framed Florence. In passing she had opened the outer door and the light, streaming about her, as for an instant she stood there, filled the little room with a soft, white glow that seemed to radiate from her. He did not move; gazed at her simply before she glided silently to where he sat, and stooping, kissed him.

She held her cheek close to his an instant then drew away, and moving to the window raised one of the shades. Her face was turned from him.

"Jove!" he muttered, "but you're beautiful, Florence--in that--in that blue thing."

She turned, at his exclamation, and a little pale ghost of a smile hovered about her lips. She came to him and sat beside him and took one of his hands in both hers.

"Jack, what is it?" she asked, quietly.

Their eyes met as she spoke, and before his could fall, she said: "Tell me, tell me what it is----"

It seemed to him, that instant, that he ceased to breathe.

He fairly wrenched his eyes from hers. "Flo"--it was not often of late that he called her by this name of his own invention--"Flo, I--I----"

"Tell me," she whispered, leaning toward him.

"Flo, it's all off."

He got up quickly and strode out into the hallway, and back again.

He stood beside the bookcase and looked at her, across the room, where she sat between the windows, the little smile, only, perhaps fainter now, still hovering about her lips.

"I understand, dear," she said simply.

The relief her words carried to him filled him with as keen and as complete a joy as he had ever felt.

"I knew you would," he said; "I knew you would--you're so sensible about things."

The smile flickered an instant brighter as she replied, with a little pout, "Oh, Jack, never call a girl '_sensible_': it's as bad as calling her '_nice_,' and that's like throwing a stone at her."

He laughed, a little stridently.

"Come here, dear; sit here and tell me all about it." She made room for him beside her and held the cushions against the wall till he sank among them.

"Is it your father, dear; did you tell _him_?" she asked quietly.

"No, it isn't," he blurted, frankly. "I wish to Heaven it were."

"So it's you; just yourself; oh, Jack!"

How grateful he was for that little note of gay mockery in her voice she never knew.

"Can't you tell me all about it?"

He did not answer at once.

"Then shall _I_ tell _you_?" she said. He glanced at her appealingly, but she was still smiling.

"Well--let's see,--where does it begin? Oh, yes. There was once a boy came to college, and he fell in with other boys and had the best sort of time till he met an ogre--no, I mean an ogress--and after that he didn't have a good time at all----"

He was smiling now, with her.

"----And in some foolish way he began to think he liked the ogress--whom he shouldn't have liked--and she, well, she liked him too, and they became pals--regular pals--and one day he told her he loved her. He thought he did. He didn't _really_; but he was to learn _that_ afterward. So they became engaged--this fine fellow and the ogress. Silly, wasn't it? Silly of the fine fellow and silly of the ogress. And for a little while--no,"--she mused--"not a _little_ while; quite a long while, they were happy; very, very happy. And all the time they were drifting closer and closer to the edge of a precipice over which they were sure to take a tumble one day. But before that day came the fine fellow woke up, for, you see, he'd only been dreaming all the time. And the ogress wasn't an ogress at all, but just a girl--a _sensible_ girl...."

He glanced at her reprovingly.

" ... just a sensible girl," she went on, "who, when he told her it was all a dream, said it had been a happy, happy dream, but that perhaps the awakening had come just in time. Perhaps it has, Jack," there was a note of seriousness in her voice now. "Perhaps it has; who knows? We shall think so anyway; shan't we? It will make it easier...."

"Yes, it will make it easier," he muttered, all the light gone out of his eyes, the smile from his lips.

"Jack; you _will_ tell me one thing, won't you, dear?"

He looked up into her face wonderingly.

"What is it?" he said.

"Was there another--another besides the ogress who turned out to be the sensible girl? Tell me, Jack; it's all I want to know. I don't know why I should want to know even that; but I do. I guess a girl always does. Perhaps it's because it usually tends either to light-up things or to make her still more miserable. I don't know which; only it's at such times that a girl wants either light or more misery. One seems to do as well as the other. Tell me--was there, Jack?"

He met her eyes frankly, as he spoke.

"Why Flo--I--you see----" He looked away.

She settled back among the cushions.

"Flo, you wouldn't understand," he managed to say. "You see, it's----"

"But I know now," she exclaimed--"and somehow it makes me feel better----"

"Flo!"

She perceived the reproof in his tone and added eagerly: "Don't think I meant to mock you, dear; I didn't truly. I meant just what I said--and just that way...."

Presently he stood up before her and looked down into her face.

"Flo,"--he spoke earnestly, almost passionately--"Flo, you're a girl in a million!"

"There!" she cried gaily, "that's better than '_sensible_.'"

He smiled.

"In a million," he repeated as though to himself. "I can never, never forget you----"

"Oh, Jack!" Again the old note of playful raillery crept into her voice. "Now you've gone back. Of course you can't forget me; at least you mustn't, really you mustn't; it wouldn't be fair."

He took up his hat from the little table.

"Are you going?" she asked.

"I'd better," he said, simply.

"And shan't I see you again?..."

Before he could reply she cried: "But I can see you graduate! I can see you get the Athens scholarship; and I shall too. And oh, Jack, when I read some day about you I shall be so glad--so glad I'll cry!" As she spoke he saw the thin mist that he remembered seeing once before, gather over her eyes again. He touched her lightly on the cheeks with the tips of his fingers, and, stooping kissed her forehead.

"Good-bye," he said.

She took his hand and pressed it.

"Good-bye--and the best luck in the world!" she cried.

She heard the door close behind him. For a long time she did not move from among the cushions. Finally she rose. From the top shelf of the teak wood bookcase she took down a Japanese rose jar, and from it drew out a little card portrait of a young sweet-faced girl. She stood at the window and lifting her eyes from the portrait gazed off down the street.... The pink faded from her cheeks.... The photograph slipped from her fingers.... She sank upon her knees and hid her face among the cushions.... By and by she rose and went out into the hallway and up the stairs....

Her mother, entering below, called to her.

"I'm up here dressing, dear," she answered. "I had a note from Ed Trombley--you remember him, mother--a '90 man. His class is having a reunion and he's back for it. He has asked me to drive to the Lake with him--you don't care do you?"

"No child...."

And the frail, gray-haired woman went quietly into the little round room with her sewing.

THE KIDNAPPING