Chapter XXXI

But a night one should have preferred to forget.

Roderick Delano took Melissa home--in his own car--an impressive dark-blue equipage of obviously recent vintage.

“Like to drive?” he inquired, on the way--“glad to have you use the old boat--any time.”

Melissa said she didn’t drive.

“Glad to teach you,” he suggested. “How about a lesson to-morrow afternoon?”

He was frankly taken with Melissa. The Marchesa’s diplomacy had been to some purpose. “Sounds wonderful,” he said, “the way you’ve dolled up my diggings! Aunt Amalie tells me I wouldn’t know ’em ... all flowers and books and things. When are you going to let me have a look-see?”

“Any time,” Melissa told him.... “I shall be very glad, of course.”

“You’re tired, aren’t you?” said the Marchesa’s nephew abruptly. “Didn’t she say you were just over flu? Suppose we step out and get you home a little faster? Let you go to bed and get a little sleep.... It’s pretty selfish of me, keeping you out like this....”

They had taken the long way home. As has been done before.

“I am--a little tired,” said Melissa.

Something at the back of her mind jeered softly. “Yes--and at the first kind word from a new man--you’re ready to let go--and have him take care of you! Promiscuous--aren’t you, my dear? What are you true to--anyhow?”

“It’s very thoughtful of you,” said the visible and audible Melissa. “I’m not quite--fit--yet.”

“And I’m a brute,” said Delano warmly, “not to have thought of that, myself.”

He took her home, at once. He lingered not at all, at the door.

“Seems funny,” he said with an engaging grin, “--entertaining angels, like this.... Hope the servants look after you properly. Kathleen’s a darn good maid ... had her for years....”

“Oh, yes--Kathleen _is_--thank you!” said Melissa. She shut the door and locked it. She shut her eyes against the beauty of that shadowy and silent room.

She went to bed but not to sleep. Hour after hour she lay there, self-tortured, self-flayed. She thought, drowsing, toward morning, with twitching limbs and smarting eyelids.... “I’ll get what I can out of Kathleen.”

But she hadn’t much hope--of anything. Black as the altars of Good Friday, Melissa’s world, that night! Only your true romanticist knows despair without so much as a toe-hold on to-morrow.

She slept at last heavily, tired in body and mind. It was after ten o’clock next morning when a noise in the room waked her, a small, discreet, regretful noise, but one, nevertheless at which Melissa sat straight up in bed--trembling.

“There now!” said Kathleen’s gentle monotone, “I was goin’ right out without disturbin’ ye.... I c’n come in again later, as good as not ... ’twas only a par’rcel I brought in ... delivered late last night. ... I thought it might be somethin’ ye’d be wantin’ ... before ye went out.”

“Thank you, Kathleen,” said Melissa, stretched white arms and swept the tangled dark hair away from her eyes.

“Are ye tired, maybe?” asked Kathleen. She laid the parcel, stockings or gloves by the look of its long narrow boxing, down on the bed and turned toward the windows. “I’ll just let down the shades a bit more--and ye c’n go back to sleep.”

“No--I’ve got to get up!” said Melissa. She ached with weariness. Like shapes of trees appearing through a thinning fog, things came back to her slowly. A blue car.... A small blond mustache ... small blond cupids on a Dresden urn. The Marchesa--black velvet and orchids and diamonds ... the Marchesa’s party ... the Marchesa’s nephew....

That was when the fog lifted, and stark and cruel and cold, everything stood clear.

The nephew had come back. And he was _not_ Mister Roderick.

He was Roderick Delano, that is--but he was not the man whose picture Melissa had shown to Kathleen and whom Kathleen had told her....

Kathleen was busy with the window-shades. Her plump blue and white shoulders, her fluffy brown head, silhouetted against a tide of aureate sunshine.

“Kathleen,” said Melissa, “I want to ask you something ...” her voice quavered unexpectedly. For time in which to steady it--she took up the neatly wrapped and labeled box from the coverlet beside her and turned it about, in nervous fingers. The address was strange. She said in another tone--curious, merely, and surprised--grateful for any temporary shield to her emotion: “Kathleen--this isn’t for me! It’s for a Mrs. Walters....”

“Ma’am?” said Kathleen startled. She came back to the bed and held out her hand for the parcel. “It’s not for you? There was two of ’em there ...” turning so that light fell across the name she lifted it close to her eyes and squinted sharply....

“Of course--I must have got the wrong one,” said Kathleen, shamefacedly, “it’s that dark in the office ... and--I hadn’t me glasses....”

“Glasses...?” Melissa repeated--in a pleasantly even murmur--but like daylight at the end of a tunnel, something glimmered all at once and grew large. She shrank, but the truth was there, suddenly flooding everything ... by a mere mishap ... by the silliest chance....

“Do you have to wear glasses, Kathleen?” asked Melissa.

Kathleen blushed--and giggled.

“I look so awful in ’em, Miss Wayne ... and it’s only for readin’ and such that I need ’em....”

“Are you--near-sighted?” Melissa persisted. Kathleen responded with a gush of confidence.

“I am--from the time I was a little gir-rl! But I get along well enough mostly. Y’see, Miss Wayne--I carry ’em in my pocket--and if there’s need of ’em--I just whip ’em on and off. I’m a vain woman--I don’t like to be seen, the way I look in spectacles--and that’s the truth!”

“I see,” said Melissa quietly.

“Was there somethin’ you wanted to ask me?” said Kathleen, turning in the doorway, Mrs. Walters’ parcel in her hands. “You was beginnin’--a little bit ago....”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Melissa.

She didn’t get up at once. She lay, her face hidden in the pillow, for some time, after Kathleen had gone out very softly, shutting the door with a gentle click.

It did not matter, indeed! Nothing mattered any longer.

Why ask questions of Kathleen about a small and faded picture which it now appeared she had looked at--but not seen?