Chapter XXXVIII

They rode miles up the river in the taxi and as many miles back until even to glamoured eyes the meter showed a perceptible tendency to exaggeration.

Melissa observed it first. She said, with her cheek against his sleeve: “Take me home. Didn’t you say you weren’t--wealthy?”

“Poor as Job’s turkey. I don’t know if I mentioned it.”

“Well--look at that thing! If it goes any higher it’ll be out of the top. You won’t have any money to go back to Pineville, to-morrow....”

“Oh, good Lord!” he muttered dazedly.... “I’d forgotten.... I’m not going to-morrow! It’s too much to ask.”

“I’m not asking it,” said Melissa, demurely. “I’m not asking anything. I’m just sitting very quiet--to see what happens next.”

He bent his red head to her dark one.

“You are--the sweetest thing!... You look like all the slim cool disdainful sophisticated women in the world ... but you aren’t! ... you’re an adorable child, with her arms full of fairy-tales!”

“I’m--_me_ ... with you,--if you see what I mean,” said Melissa. “It’s like something being let out of prison. I can be nicer for you than I could ever have been for any one else in the world ... if you hadn’t come, I could never have been my inside self. Because--while some men understand you with their minds--you can’t bear them to touch you ... and others fool your senses, for a time, but they’ve nothing to say to your head ... what one wants....”

She didn’t say what one wanted. He lifted their locked hands to his lips and said it for her. “You’re satisfied?”

“If you are.”

“If _I_ am!” said Carroll--and laughed shortly.

They left the taxi at Columbus Circle and walked over to the Avenue.

Melissa told him about Mr. Brooks and the play-broking and the office. He told Melissa about Pineville, his rather scattering practice and his incurable flair for politics, with Washington as an eventual goal.

“You see,” he explained eagerly ... for all his casual control, he had moments of vehement earnest, startling in their intensity ... “what I feel about the whole thing is this.... So long as the man with a brain and a code and a decent background doesn’t care if he votes or not--leaves it all to the man in the street and hide-bound party organization ... just so long we’ll get what we’ve gotten for a good many years ... graft and mismanagement and stupidity in high places. We’ve only ourselves to thank when we let fat fools ride over our heads into Congress ... does this bore you?”

“No,” said Melissa--“I like it. Go on.”

Lights along the Avenue like foggy pearls. Buses and motors going by in a misty stream. Tall buildings, wraith-like.

He said suddenly, “I feel as if there were no one alive in the world to-night--but you and me.”

“I know,” said Melissa. “So do I.”

“Do you think we’ll always be able to speak the truth to each other...? With a beginning like this--nothing else would be good enough.”

Before she could answer he went on: “I give you my word--I’ll never lie to you ... even if I lose you for it.”

“I give you my word, too,” said Melissa. A curious moment of betrothal. His fingers bruised her arm.

“On top of that--tell me this--can you live in Pineville--after New York? In a big old white house with not enough furniture in half the rooms. With an old nigger woman to cook and clean up--with only a flivver to ride in--but a yellow rose over your doorstep.”

“If you’re there, too,” said Melissa.

“How soon?” asked Carroll ... “darling!”

They talked that over for blocks.

He could see no need for waiting. “We won’t have much money--just enough to live on. I’m running for reëlection as Mayor this year ... if I get it ... the thing opens out ... some day, perhaps ... Governor ... and after that....”

Melissa felt a premonitory stir, vague in the recesses of her consciousness ... like music and marching feet, a long way off. Was there a day, hid in the mists ahead, when she would look back at this and say to him.... “You knew--didn’t you!”

Was that wonderful deep voice born to sway its thousands?

Or were he and she just two crazy happy fools tempting fate?

Either way, they had by extraordinary chance found each other and whatever he did, Melissa asked no more of life than to do it with him.

Crossing at Forty-ninth Street he said with one of his brusque laughs. “I’m hungry as the devil. I hadn’t any dinner. I’d forgotten all about it.”

“Neither had I,” said Melissa. “I’d forgotten too.” They stared at each other in delighted horror.

He said: “Where’ll we go?--what’s nearest?”

“Childs’,” said Melissa and was firm. They had wheat-cakes and coffee at ten o’clock. Their first meal together. Afterward they walked for an hour or so more and told each other a great many things which apparently could not be held over for another day.

Carroll said at parting, at reluctant and eventual parting, that he would stay on for a week in Roderick’s place, if at the end of that time Melissa would go home with him.

Melissa began to object, met the look in his eyes and said she would.

“I was on the way to reading plays for Mr. Brooks, too!”

“I’ll let you read proof on my speeches.”

“Will you let me help you write them?”

“That’s what I want you for, really.”

She sent him away, not without effort.

His smile was burned into her soul and his eyes and the feel of his hand. If she never saw him again, his voice was in her ears for the rest of her days--and nights.