FullReads

Graylock received them in his office–a big, reckless-eyed, handsome man, with Broad Street written all over him and “danger” etched in every deepened line of his face.

“Well, how about that business of mine?” he inquired. “It’s all right to keep me waiting, of course, while you and Quair here match for highballs at the Ritz.”

“I had to see Drene–that’s why we are late,” explained Guilder. “We’re ready to go ahead and let your contracts for you–“

“Drene?” interrupted Graylock, looking straight at Guilder with a curious and staring intensity. “Why drag Drene into an excuse?”

“Because we went to his studio,” said Guilder. “Now about letting the contracts–“

“Were you at Drene’s studio?”

“Yes. He’s doing the groups for the new opera for us.”

Quair, watching Graylock, was seized with a malicious impulse:

“Neat little skirt he has up there–that White girl,” he remarked, seating himself on Graylock’s polished table.

A dull flush stained Graylock’s cheekbones, and his keen eyes turned on Quair. The latter lighted a cigarette, expelled the smoke in two thin streams from his abnormally narrow nostrils.

“Some skirt,” he repeated. “And it looks as though old Drene had her number–“

Guilder’s level voice interrupted:

“The contracts are ready to be–“

But Graylock, not heeding, and perhaps not hearing, and looking all the time at Quair, said slowly:

“Drene isn’t that kind…. Is he?”

“Our kind, you mean?” inquired Quair, with a malice so buried under flippancy that the deliberate effrontery passed for it with Graylock. Which amused Quair for a moment, but the satisfaction was not sufficient. He desired that Graylock should feel the gaff.

“Drene,” he said, “is one of those fussers who jellify when hurled on their necks–the kind that ask that kind of girl to marry them after she’s turned down everything else they suggest.”

Graylock’s square jaw tightened and his steady eyes seemed to grow even paler; but Quair, as though perfectly unconscious of this man’s record with the wife of his closest friend, and of the rumors which connected him so seriously with Cecile White, swung his leg unconcernedly, where it dangled over the table’s edge, and smiled frankly and knowingly upon Graylock:

“There’s always somebody to marry that sort of girl; all mush isn’t on the breakfast table. When you and I are ready to quit, Graylock, Providence has created a species of man who settles our bills.”

He threw back his head, inhaled the smoke of his cigarette, sent two thin streams through his nose.

“Maybe Drene may marry her himself. But–I don’t believe he’ll have to…. Now, about those contracts–” he affected a yawn, “–go on and tell him, Guilder,” he added, his words distorted by another yawn.

He stepped down to the floor from his perch on the table, stretched his arms, looking affably all the while at Graylock, who had never moved a muscle.

“I believe you had a run-in with that Cecile girl once, didn’t you, Graylock? Like the rest of us, eh? Oh, well–my hat off to old Drene if he wins out. I hold no malice. After all, Graylock, what’s a woman between friends?”

And he nodded gaily at Graylock and sauntered leisurely to the window.

And kept his back turned, fearful of exploding with laughter in the very face of the man who had been staring at him out of pale, unchanging eyes so steadily and so long.

Guilder’s patient, bored, but moderate voice was raised once more:

“In regard to the letting of these contracts–“

But Graylock, staring at Quair’s back, neither heeded nor heard him, for his brain was still ringing with the mockery of Quair’s words–“What is a woman between friends?” And now, for the first time, he was beginning to understand what the answer might be.

III

She had not posed for Drene during the last two weeks, and he had begun to miss her, after his own fashion–that is, he thought of her when not preoccupied and sometimes desired her companionship when unoccupied.

And one evening he went to his desk, rummaged among note-books, and scribbled sheets of paper, until he found her address, which he could never remember, wrote it down on another slip of paper, pocketed it, and went out to his dinner.