It was with mingled feelings of anxiety and quiet joy that Lila lived through the three days during which Knowlton did not appear at the Lamartine. She had heard nothing of what had happened after Knowlton had left her at the door that evening, but she had not forgotten the appearance of Sherman at the Restaurant Lucia; hence her anxiety. She hugged her memory and waited.
On the morning of the fourth day her patience was rewarded by the following note, handed to her at her desk in the hotel by a messenger boy:
DEAR MISS WILLIAMS:
I had expected to see you before this, but it has been impossible, owing to an accident I encountered.
I have been — let us say incapacitated.
But will you dine with me this evening? I shall call at the hotel for you at six.
Lila flushed with happiness as she folded the note and placed it in the bosom of her dress, at the same time looking round for the messenger boy to take her answer. But the boy had disappeared. What difference? She was to be with him again!
As she glanced up and happened to meet the eye of the Venus at the cigar stand she smiled involuntarily, so brightly that Miss Hughes fairly grinned in sympathy.
This little incident did not pass unnoticed. Dumain and Dougherty, seated on the leather lounge in the corner, saw the messenger boy hand her the note and her change of color as she read it, and they glanced at each other significantly.
“I wonder!” Dougherty observed.
“Yes,” said Dumain positively. “Eet was from heem. Zat expression of zee face — I know eet. He ees a what you call eet comeback.”
And when they saw Lila place the note in her bosom they were sure of it. Dumain sighed. Dougherty swore. They departed for the billiard room to communicate the sad intelligence.
Thus were they not wholly surprised when, at six o’clock that evening, they saw Knowlton enter the lobby and walk to Lila’s desk.
There was a small, ugly, black patch over his right ear; otherwise no indication of the injury he had received at Dumain’s rooms.
He escorted Lila from the hotel, while the Erring Knights looked on in helpless silence.
Forthwith they entered into a warm discussion. Dougherty and Driscoll were for immediate and drastic action, though they were unable to suggest any particular method; Dumain, Jennings, and Booth advised delay and caution; Sherman grunted unintelligibly and left the hotel. They argued till seven o’clock, then dispersed and went their several ways without having decided on anything definitely.
Meanwhile Sherman, who had seen Knowlton and Lila enter a taxicab and followed them in another, was acting on his own account. He had his trouble for his pains.
They stopped at a restaurant for dinner, and Sherman shivered for an hour on the outside, waiting for them to reappear. He then followed them to a concert at Carnegie Hall, and kicked his heels in the foyer for two hours and a half — only to find at the end that they had left by another door, or that he had missed them in the crowd.
He swore violently under his breath, dismissed his cab, and walked at a furious pace to his room downtown, consumed by the fires of jealousy and hate.
Thenceforth the pursuit was one of relentless malignity. Sherman saw clearly that he was playing a losing game, and he redoubled his vigilance and activity with the energy of despair.
To see the woman he coveted thus smiling on another man appeared to him to justify any treachery or baseness, however vile; if, indeed, his evil mind were in need of any impetus.
He felt that he had some evidence of the correctness of his suspicions concerning Knowlton — for instance, the contents of the wallet he had taken from his coat at Dumain’s rooms; but he knew that was not enough.
There was not a day during the month that followed but found him on the heels of his quarry. He followed him to cafés, restaurants, theaters, and concert halls, often in company with Lila. He followed him home and to the Lamartine, and on endless walks along the drive and through the park. And all without result.
Then there came a sudden change in Knowlton’s habits. One weary morning he began calling at real-estate offices.
By the time they had reached the fifth of these, Sherman, who was following him, disguised with a blond wig and mustache, began to suspect that he had been discovered and was being played with. But he continued the chase.
Knowlton stopped in another real-estate office, and another. Here he remained for over an hour, while Sherman lurked in a nearby doorway. Then he emerged with a companion. Sherman will not soon forget what followed.
They led him to the downtown subway.
At Brooklyn Bridge they boarded a Coney Island Elevated train. On this they rode two or three stations past Bath Beach, then left it for a trolleycar, landing finally at a dreary, swamp-like tract of land, with but one or two houses in sight.
The inevitable cheap saloon was on the corner.
Here they remained for three hours — it was a cold, windy day in January — walking up and down the newly laid eighteen-inch sidewalks while Sherman sat in the saloon, trying to warm himself with cheap brandy and watching them through a window. They gave no sign of preparation to depart. Sherman could bear it no longer.
“I wonder what the fool is up to?” he muttered as he boarded a trolley car. “Is he going to buy a home?”
And that brought with it a thought which caused him to squirm with pain.
He resumed his muttering: “By Heavens, he’ll never get her! If I have to I’ll see Colly. He can get the gang, and that means—”
A sinister smile overspread his face.
The fact about Knowlton was, he had got a job.
That evening at the Restaurant Lucia he surprised Lila by telling her of the day’s occurrences. They were dining together nearly every evening now, though Knowlton was seldom seen at the Lamartine. He called for Lila at her room.
They had discovered a common love for music and books, and spent half of their evenings at concert halls and theaters. And when Lila felt indisposed or too tired to go out, or the weather was inclement, they remained in her room and Knowlton read stories and poems to her in his deep, well-modulated voice. Lila could never decide which she liked the more — the quiet, happy evenings at home or the more exciting pleasures to be found downtown.
But one thing she knew: never before had she tasted life. For the first time she saw its colors and scented its perfumes. Each day was a new delight; each look and word of Knowlton’s a new sensation.
Knowlton spoke no word of love, and Lila wondered a little at it in her innocent way. He was attentive and solicitous even to the point of tenderness, and he was certainly not timid; but he never gave voice to any expression of sentiment.
Lila did not allow herself to be disturbed by this, nor did she employ any artifices — knowing none. She merely waited.
“Perhaps,” she would whisper to herself at night when he had gone — “perhaps he will... will tell me... when—”
Then she would flush at the half-formed thought, innocent as it was, and brush it aside.
Nor did Knowlton ever talk of himself. Long since he had heard the story of Lila’s life — how she had been left alone and penniless at the age of eighteen, and of the resulting struggle, courageous and at times almost desperate, to keep her head above the alluring and deadly waves of the metropolis. But he had given no confidence in return. He seemed forever entrenched behind an impenetrable barrier of reserve, and Lila never presumed to storm it.
Then, on the evening mentioned above, at the Restaurant Lucia, he suddenly lowered one of the gates of his barrier. They had been seated for some thirty minutes and were waiting for the roast, when, after a period of unusual taciturnity, he had suddenly burst forth: