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There were no men in Paula’s letters now, but a note of tenderness ran through them that had not been there before. From several sources he heard that she had “a heavy beau,” Lowell Thayer, a Bostonian of wealth and position, and though he was sure she still loved him, it made him uneasy to think that he might lose her, after all. Save for one unsatisfactory day she had not been in New York for almost five months, and as the rumors multiplied he became increasingly anxious to see her. In February he took his vacation and went down to Florida.

Palm Beach sprawled plump and opulent between the sparkling sapphire of Lake Worth, flawed here and there by house-boats at anchor, and the great turquoise bar of the Atlantic Ocean. The huge bulks of the Breakers and the Royal Poinciana rose as twin paunches from the bright level of the sand, and around them clustered the Dancing Glade, Bradley’s House of Chance, and a dozen modistes and milliners with goods at triple prices from New York. Upon the trellissed veranda of the Breakers two hundred women stepped right, stepped left, wheeled, and slid in that then celebrated calisthenic known as the double-shuffle, while in half-time to the music two thousand bracelets clicked up and down on two hundred arms.

At the Everglades Club after dark Paula and Lowell Thayer and Anson and a casual fourth played bridge with hot cards. It seemed to Anson that her kind, serious face was wan and tired–she had been around now for four, five, years. He had known her for three.

“Two spades.”

“Cigarette? … Oh, I beg your pardon. By me.”

“By.”

“I’ll double three spades.”

There were a dozen tables of bridge in the room, which was filling up with smoke. Anson’s eyes met Paula’s, held them persistently even when Thayer’s glance fell between them….

“What was bid?” he asked abstractedly.

“Rose of Washington Square”

sang the young people in the corners:

“I’m withering there
In basement air–“

The smoke banked like fog, and the opening of a door filled the room with blown swirls of ectoplasm. Little Bright Eyes streaked past the tables seeking Mr. Conan Doyle among the Englishmen who were posing as Englishmen about the lobby.

“You could cut it with a knife.”

“… cut it with a knife.”

“… a knife.”

At the end of the rubber Paula suddenly got up and spoke to Anson in a tense, low voice. With scarcely a glance at Lowell Thayer, they walked out the door and descended a long flight of stone steps–in a moment they were walking hand in hand along the moonlit beach.

“Darling, darling….” They embraced recklessly, passionately, in a shadow…. Then Paula drew back her face to let his lips say what she wanted to hear–she could feel the words forming as they kissed again…. Again she broke away, listening, but as he pulled her close once more she realized that he had said nothing–only “Darling! Darling!” in that deep, sad whisper that always made her cry. Humbly, obediently, her emotions yielded to him and the tears streamed down her face, but her heart kept on crying: “Ask me–oh, Anson, dearest, ask me!”

“Paula…. Paula!“

The words wrung her heart like hands, and Anson, feeling her tremble, knew that emotion was enough. He need say no more, commit their destinies to no practical enigma. Why should he, when he might hold her so, biding his own time, for another year–forever? He was considering them both, her more than himself. For a moment, when she said suddenly that she must go back to her hotel, he hesitated, thinking, first, “This is the moment, after all,” and then: “No, let it wait–she is mine….”

He had forgotten that Paula too was worn away inside with the strain of three years. Her mood passed forever in the night.

He went back to New York next morning filled with a certain restless dissatisfaction. There was a pretty débutante he knew in his car, and for two days they took their meals together. At first he told her a little about Paula and invented an esoteric incompatibility that was keeping them apart. The girl was of a wild, impulsive nature, and she was flattered by Anson’s confidences. Like Kipling’s soldier, he might have possessed himself of most of her before he reached New York, but luckily he was sober and kept control. Late in April, without warning, he received a telegram from Bar Harbor in which Paula told him that she was engaged to Lowell Thayer, and that they would be married immediately in Boston. What he never really believed could happen had happened at last.