"They _aren't_. And I haven't the slightest wish to suggest that it was _your_ fault, Oliver--but no girl as sweet and friendly and darling as Nancy Ellicott, the little I knew of her that is, but other girls can tell, and she certainly thought you were the person that made all the stars come out in the sky and twinkle, would go and break her engagement _entirely_ of her own accord--you _must_ have--"

And now Oliver looked at her with a good deal of sorrowful pity--she had delivered herself so completely into his hands.

"I never said it was her fault, Elinor," he said gently, keeping the laughter back by a superb effort of will. "It was mine, I am sure," and then he added most sorrowfully, "All mine."

"_Well!_"

For a moment he forgot that he was there playing checkers with himself and Elinor for Ted.

"You've never been through it, have you?" he said rather fiercely. "You can't have--you couldn't talk like that if you had. When you've put everything you've got in mind or body or soul completely in one person's hands and then, just because of a silly misunderstanding we neither of us meant--they drop it--and you drop with it and the next thing you know you're nothing but a _mess_ and all you can wonder is if even the littlest part of you will ever feel whole again--" He realized that he was very nearly shouting, and then, suddenly, that if he kept on this way the game was over and lost. He must think about Ted, not Nancy. Ted, Ted. Mr. Theodore Billett, Jr.

"She'd forgiven me such a lot," he ended rather lamely. "I thought she'd keep on."

But his outburst had only made Elinor feel the sorrier for him--he felt like a burglar as he saw the kindness in her eyes.

"I don't imagine she ever had such an awful lot to forgive, Ollie," she said gently.

Then the lie he had been leading up to all the way came at last, magnificently hesitant.

"She had, Elinor. I was in France you know."

He was afraid when he had said it--it sounded so much like a t.i.tle out of a movie--but he looked steadily at her and saw all the color go out of her face and then return to it burningly.

"Well, that wasn't anything to be--forgiven about exactly--was it?" she said unsteadily.

He spoke carefully, in broken sentences, only the knowledge that this was the only way he could think of to help things nerving his mind. "It wasn't being in France, Elinor. It was--the adjuncts. I don't suppose I was any worse than most of my outfit--but that didn't make it any easier when I had to tell her I hadn't been any better. I felt," his voice rose, his literary trick of mind had come to his rescue now and made him know just how he would have felt if it had really happened, "I felt as if I were in h.e.l.l. Really. But I had to tell her. And when she'd forgiven me that--and said that it was all right--that it didn't make any real difference now--I thought she was about the finest person in the world--for telling me such nice lies. And after that--I was so sure that it was all right--that because of her knowing and still being able to care--it would last--oh well--"

He stopped, waiting for Elinor but Elinor for a person so voluble a little while ago seemed curiously unwilling to speak.

"Lord knows why I'm telling you this--except that we started arguing and you're nice enough to listen. It's not tea-table conversation, or it wouldn't have been ten years ago--and if I've shocked you, I'm sorry.

But after that, as I said--I didn't think there was anything that could separate us--really I didn't--and then just one little time when we didn't quite understand each other and--over. Sorry to spoil your illusions, Elinor, but that's the way people do."

"But how could she?" and this time there was nothing but pure hurt questioning in Elinor's voice and the words seemed to hurt her as if she were talking needles. "Why Ollie--she couldn't possibly--if she really cared--"

All he wondered was which of them would break first.

"She could," he said steadily, in spite of the fact that everything in his mind kept saying "No. No. No." "Any girl could--easily. Even you, Elinor--if you'll excuse my being rude--"

For a moment he thought that his carefully plotted scenario was going to break up into melodrama with the reticent, composed and sympathetic Elinor's suddenly rising and slapping his face. Then he heard her say in a voice of utter anger,

"How can you say anything like that, how can you? You are being the most hateful person that ever lived. Why if I really cared for anyone--if I ever really cared--" and then she began to cry most steadily and whole-heartedly into her napkin and Oliver in spite of all the generous plaudits he was receiving from various parts of his mind for having carried delicate business successfully to a most dramatic conclusion, wondered what in the name of Hymen his cue was now. Some remnants of diplomacy however kept him from doing anything particularly obtrusive and, after he had received an official explanation of nervous headache with official detachment, the end of tea found them being quite cheerful together. Neither alluded directly to what both thought about most but in spite of that each seemed inwardly convinced of being completely if cryptically understood by the other and when the noise of the first returning motor brought a friendly plotter's "You talk to them--they mustn't see me this way," from Elinor and a casual remark from Oliver that he felt sure he would have to run into town for dinner--family had forwarded a letter from an editor this morning--so if she wanted anything done--they seemed to comprehend each other very thoroughly.

He babbled with the returning jazzers for a quarter of an hour or so, tactfully circ.u.mvented Peter into offering him the loan of a car since he had to go into New York, and intimated that he would drop back and in at the Rackstraws' dance as soon as possible, after many apologies for daring to leave at all. Then he went slowly upstairs, humming loudly as he did so. Elinor met him outside his door.

"Ollie--as long as you're going in--I wonder if you'd mind--" Her tone was elaborately careless but her eyes were dancing as she gave him a letter, firmly addressed but unstamped.

"No, glad to--" And then he grinned. "You'll be at the Rackstraws'."

"Yes, Ollie."

"Well--we'll be back by ten thirty or try to. Maybe earlier," he said at her back and she turned and smiled once at him. Then he went into his room.

"Mr. Theodore Billett," said the address on the letter, "252A Madison Ave., N. Y. C.," and down in the lower corner, "Kindness of Mr. Oliver Crowe."

He thought he might very well ask for the latter phrase on Ted's and Elinor's wedding invitations. He pa.s.sed a hand over his forehead--that had been harder than walking a tight-rope with your head in a sack--but the chasm had been crossed and nothing was left now but the fireworks on the other side. How easy it was to tinker other people's love-affairs for them--for oneself the difficulties were somehow a little harder to manage, he thought. And then he began considering how long it would take from Southampton to New York in the two-seater and just where Ted would most likely be.

x.x.xIV

A long-distance telephone conversation about six o'clock in the afternoon between two voices usually so even and composed that the little pulse of excitement beating through both as they speak now seems perilous, unnatural. One is Mr. Severance's thin cool speech and the other--most curious, that--seems by every obsequious without being servile, trained and impa.s.sive turn and phrase to be that of that treasure among household treasures, Elizabeth.

"My instructions were that I was to call you, sir, whenever I was next given an evening out."

"Yes, Elizabeth. Well?"

"I have been given an evening out tonight, sir."

"Yes."

"Mrs. Severance has told me that I am on no account to return till tomorrow morning, sir."

"Yes. Go on."

"There are the materials of a small but quite sufficient meal for two persons in the refrigerator, sir. Mrs. Severance is dining out, sir--she said." "Yes. Any further information?"

"Mrs. Severance received a telephone call this morning, sir, before she went out. It was after that that she told me I was to have the evening."

"You did not happen to--overhear--the conversation, did you, Elizabeth?"

"Oh no, sir. Mrs. Severance spoke very low. The only words that I could catch were 'You' at the beginning and 'Please come' near the end. The words 'please come' were rather--affectionately--spoken if I might make so bold, sir."

"You have done very well, Elizabeth."

"Thank you, sir."

"There is nothing else?"

"No, sir. Should you wish me to 'phone you again before tomorrow morning, sir?"

"No, Elizabeth."

"Thank you, sir. Good-by, sir."

"Good-by, Elizabeth."