Chapter XII

Melissa rather wondered, thinking it over from day to day, just how much intention lay behind the mingled grimness and nonsense of Kenealy’s avowal. Did he mean it to warn her away from any but the lightest sort of relationship? That hurt her pride unspeakably.

Or would have, if she hadn’t felt fairly certain that he had spoken on impulse and from the man’s inescapable desire to lay his sorest trouble in a woman’s lap.

Because for all his flippancy, the kind of airy smartness which was second nature to him (and to most others of his craft at that moment), Melissa sensed an unhealed wound. Kenealy seemed to her like one of those Pierrots, made in Paris and treasured in the photographed bedrooms of cinema stars ... a gay yet wistful creature, with knowledgeable eyes, a smiling mouth, and a tear painted on one cheek.

As for her own secret feeling toward him--whatever it may have been to begin with--a married man had little place, more frankly none at all, in the collection of possible futures which Melissa was making.

A friend--perhaps.

Nothing more!

And that from the most utilitarian standpoint.

Melissa felt rather proud of her cool head and her manageable heart. She moved Kenealy back upon the board to a position of comparative unimportance. She brought Murdock Fleming well forward--ignoring the fact that Kenealy drew her a dozen different ways, while Fleming for all his niceness, his devotion, his eminent eligibility, was never other than a cold contact.

The playwright whom the Marchesa had sapiently suspected of bedroom farce (his name, blackly set forth upon one program and another of consecutive seasons, was Austin Beall) took second place, shortly; perhaps, even before he knew it.

“A creditable field,” was the Marchesa’s satisfied comment. “You will enlarge it, I expect.”

“One meets new people all the time,” said Melissa, with just the right note of indifference. “Mr. Beall--I forgot if I told you--is having a little party for me next week.”

“More drawing-room comedy?” inquired the Marchesa and sniggered in a filmy handkerchief. “Don’t be too amiable, my dear--till you make sure that new play of his attracts more than the critics!”

Melissa said she understood the new play was an established success. But when she went home a little later, she sat down before her fire and hid her face in her hands because that last little bit made her feel indescribably tawdry....

And Melissa didn’t enjoy feeling tawdry. She who had been even in the old drab days, so royally fastidious. Had she no longer any right to resent what affronted and repelled her in the Marchesa’s tutoring?

Was she buying her mess of pottage just a trifle too dear? Late in the day to ask? And nothing to be gained by asking but a bad quarter of an hour for one’s self.

That was the day, on which, with fate smirking over her shoulder, Melissa found the picture in the drawer of the desk.

She considered afterward, looking back along the sort of road she traveled, that for her soul’s need and her heart’s contenting the thing happened none too soon.

It wasn’t, at that,--as a portrait--impressive, in proportion nor artistry.

She was looking for stamps when she found it ... jerking open with reckless fingers, one drawer after another, feeling in shadowy pigeon-holes.... Out of the last and farthest drawer which stuck and gave with disconcerting suddenness, the picture slipped, in a clutter of dusty receipts and lay there ... looking up at her.

A snapshot slightly faded, of a man, down on one knee, with a cigarette between his fingers, looking straight into the eye of the beholder.

In which eye, by platitudinous testimony, was always beauty’s home.

Melissa sat, and stared down at it for a long time without moving.

It gave her back--equally without moving--the quietest straight-shooting regard in the world. Out of level eyes, coolly amused, under level brows. His mouth firmly unsmiling had yet some way a lovable twist ... his chin the arrogant contour which bespeaks a lordly will.... Not, by common standards a pretty man--nor yet a homely one. Something beyond either good looks or the lack of them. Something which called for a wrist with a ruffle and a flickering rapier ... a gray uniform, gold-buttoned, and the crimson of a silken sash---not that his look was war-like ... only ... gallant, amazingly! Like Cyrano--with a straight nose. Tom Sawyer come to manhood....

Melissa, sitting in that dusky corner by the desk felt the blood sting her cheeks ... just to conjecture the sort of man he would be.

She went back to the couch taking the picture with her.

She studied it at her ease, curled up against the cushions with little-girl abandon. Melissa--whose every pose had come to be considered and contrived. She was sitting there when the door clicked open gently and Kathleen, the friendly Irish maid came in with an armful of fresh towels, for the bathroom.

Melissa had grown rather fond of Kathleen. That soft husky voice, those beaming blue eyes always made the apartment seem pleasantly homelike ... a housekeeper in black silk and hair-wreath brooch could have done no more ... and been no more motherly in doing it.

“Oh, ye’re home, Miss Wayne!” said Kathleen. “I hope I don’t disturb ye. I’m late gettin’ off to-day....”

“Kathleen,” said Melissa abruptly--“I was looking for stamps in the desk and I ran across a handful of old receipts....”

“I’ll just burn ’em,” said Kathleen comfortably. “Things gets left, like that, sometimes....” She patted the topmost towel and smiled at Melissa warmly.

Melissa smiled back in a sweet abstraction--what became of old receipts concerned her at that moment but vaguely. “This--” she held out the snapshot for Kathleen to see ... “this was with them ... some man’s picture. Who is it, Kathleen--do you know?” (An off chance but worth taking.)

Kathleen shifted her towels from one arm to the other and squinted, pleasantly.

“Sure!...” said Kathleen.... “That’s Mister Roderick! Him that’s in Japan, now ... the old lady’s nevvew. He’s a fine man, too--as ever was. When he left the apar-r-tment....”

Melissa caught her breath and leaned to look again.

“He leased this apartment--before I did?” (The Marchesa--with her talk of agents--the sly, secret Marchesa!)

“Leased it!--He _owned_ it. He owns the whole buildin’,” said Kathleen, then added doubtfully--“Ye didn’t know? Maybe I’m talkin’ too much. The old lady was here, the day before Mr. Roderick left--I thought sure ye knew....”

“It doesn’t matter--perhaps, in a way, I did,” Melissa assured her.

“Have ye wood enough fer yer fire?” asked Kathleen.

“Yes, quite,” said Melissa. “Quite--thank you, Kathleen!”

Her fire ... Mr. Roderick’s fire! Mr. Roderick who was not only the Dream Lover come true on a bit of cardboard ... but--here spoke the Marchesa’s voice--an eligible as well, a more than eligible--a desirable--from every standpoint. With a whole gray-stone building of his own ... an air castle on the topmost floor! A man to let oneself go about, indeed!

They were his ties then which had lain in Melissa’s top drawer. Somewhere at least, in that sun-smitten room.

She curled closer among the cushions, smiling down into those pictured eyes, that looked back at her steadily ... compellingly....

“Your desk--” she mused and sighed deliciously, without just knowing why. “Your table ... your lamps ... your couch ... your windows ... your windows!... You used to stand there, didn’t you?--looking across the Park, at dusk, as the lights came on ... all that sky!”

She got up and went to the window--dusk coming on, now--lights, already, in the Plaza’s stately mass, more lights scattered, east, north, south....

“Good night, Miss Wayne,” said Kathleen, coming out of the bedroom.

“Good night, Kathleen,” said Melissa softly. She stood with her hand upon her breast, not turning. She had slipped the picture inside her frock.

An incurable romanticist, Melissa!