… some fine day I’ll have to pay …

ENNIS STOOD AT THE WINDOW beside the scarlet curtains and watched the rain twinkling over the city, drops like golden confetti quivered over street lamps, they dribbled over the window ledge, made quick slanting designs across the pane, blurred the illuminated letters across the street—HOTEL GRENVILLE. On the glittering black pavement legs hurried by with umbrella tops, taxis skidded along the curb, their wheels swishing through the puddles, raindrops bounced like dice in the gutter. Foghorns zoomed on the river two blocks away, they croaked incessantly, the storm, the storm, they warned, beware, so beware; their deep note quavered and blurred like ink on wet paper, so be-e-e-e-wa-a-a-a-r-r-e—so—be-e—

He was acutely conscious of Effie in the room behind him, conscious of the new intensely personal quality in their relationship, a perturbing modulation from author and heroine to man and woman that made their conversation now strained on his part but far more confident on hers. He was glad of the swelling and diminishing screen of radio music that separated him from her. A rich soothing voice advised the use of Barbasol, an announcer gave the time—ten o’clock—in tender fatherly tones as if it were the facts of life.… Where was Corinne now? She was probably a perpetual ringing of his telephone over at his apartment, a why-didn’t-you-meet-me-yesterday, why-aren’t-you-ever-in—what-is-this-about-you-and-Mrs.-Callingham—oh-darling-why-did-you-run-out-with-her-so-that-Olive-says-says-says—says—

“When I saw you there in Andy’s room that day,” Effie said dreamily, “I knew in that moment you were closer to me than anyone in the world, and all the time I had talked of Andy it was you were nearer to me. The Andy I knew went long ago with his first success. Do you know, Dennis, I would never even have known him—his very voice, his walk, his gestures, and of course his hair?—he had turned into the Uncle Henry who used to visit us. I couldn’t get the two separated in my mind. Isn’t that fantastic?”

“That happens,” said Dennis.

He walked over to the radio and dialed till a soprano flew out as if she had been imprisoned for years in this ugly form waiting for the magic touch of the prince. Released now, her song flooded the little room, set the two fat goldfish in the bowl on the mantel to waltzing furiously through their miniature cosmos; another soprano joined in, the two voices floated idly through the air, high silvery bubbles of light; l’amour, ah l’amour, they sang, l’amour, a balloon bounced lightly from high C to F, slid gracefully down to B. Now other feminine voices came winging to the aid of l’amour, balancing their delicate balls of sound on the end of magic wands—there—there—ah there … The goldfish, side by side, swam rhythmically round their coral castle, their tiny green undersea forest undulated ever so faintly, oh l’amour, l’amour.…

Effie was silent and Dennis thought, now she was thinking of Marian, of Marian’s dying eyes flickering with dim joy because Andy did come, he loved her, he came all over the world for her, oh l’amour, l’amour, and when he saw her lying there he had slipped suddenly to the floor, buried his face on the pillow beside her and so she had died. “Gone,” Effie had telephoned Belle Glaenzer. “But Andy was there.” “Dead,” she told Dr. MacGregor, “but Andy came. It was in his arms—” And Effie forgot, but Dennis never would, that Effie had left the hospital with radiant transformed face, walked through the streets, through crowds, smiling and murmuring, as if she were the one who had died and this was not her body but her spirit that was wafting invisibly through the city night, triumphant after death because her lover had returned, had held her sobbing in his arms as she passed, oh l’amour, l’amour. Dennis had unlocked her door for her, saw her vague beyond smile, and had sat down on the stairs of her hallway a little afraid of what she might do. Mrs. Hickey, coming up to open the skylight door in the morning, had found him there.

This week Effie was marvelously serene, but it was Dennis who was upset for he could not understand her quiet air of consummation. Was it that Andy’s arrival had freed her from the myth or was it that meeting him, she found him worthy of all her secret tears? Losing her as a character under his control, Dennis was alarmed; now she was as baffling to him as himself, unpredictable, unanswerable, and he feared she was becoming too much a part of himself.

“You made me see things, Dennis,” Effie went on. “Now I know that the Andy I loved was the Andy I made up after he left, and when I loved him most was talking him over with you, for I put part of you on him, till he was more than you or Andy. I know it all the more because in your book you wrote about him just as I see him now. I was the one who didn’t see my own picture straight. Thank you, my dear, for truth.”

Her blue dressing gown trailed on the floor, her arms were clasped over her head, her hair hung in long braids over her shoulder and about her sad lovely face … like Melisande, Dennis thought, and there was nothing he would not do for her, nothing, his throat felt choked with his deep love for her, with sad l’amour drifting in cigarette smoke about the ceiling, with raindrops beating on the windowpane. Yes, he would give his life for her, he thought, for this high devotion was more than any carnal contentment. He thought of how fretted his life had been, how wickedly trivial, and he vowed that Effie would be his life from now on, chivalry for lust, beauty for pleasure.

“I didn’t tell you one thing.” Effie hesitated a little. “Andy thinks you are his successor with me. I—it seemed to make him feel better, so I let him think so. In case we ever run into him around town—”

“Oh, I’ll act the part,” promised Dennis. He knew Corinne must have already heard this same rumor. He had not seen her, or called her, for there was no explaining why his first duty always lay so curiously with Mrs. Callingham; no explaining that it was not an affair nor that this deep bond with Effie was stronger than any love he had ever known. Corinne seemed nothing to him beside Effie for Effie was not only a person, she was his book, just as Andy had been to her not only a man but her dream. He felt exalted and strangely bodiless around her, filled with vague high purpose. He would do something magnificent for her, something beyond mortal power.

“Tea tomorrow?” he asked, taking his hat. “Say five-ish.”

Her hand stayed in his.

“You are a dear, Dennis.” He thought, a little startled, that if it were anyone but Effie he would have sworn the lingering tone and gesture belonged to a woman in love. Could it be that with Andy materialized she was unconsciously turning to a new romantic ideal, to him, Dennis, because he had vanquished the dream Andy? … He walked back to his apartment in the rain, wondering at the new Effie that was being born, and disturbed at the hint of his own responsibility. With each moment’s consideration he slipped a bit from his high mood of selfless ambition. What he wanted, suddenly, was the clean-cut brutality of the Havana Bar, of Toots and Boots and Lora. A row of news trucks lined up before a red traffic light on Union Square bore glaring posters across their sides.

START ANDREW CALLINGHAM’S DARING LOVE

STORY IN THE DAILY MIRROR—JUNE 15TH.

“I’ll have to get to work on my new book,” thought Dennis. “I’ll make it about Lora. The story of a woman with the soul of a statue, animated only by rum. How Johnson will hate it!”

On the steps of his apartment house a little figure in a white raincoat loomed like a ghost in the dark. It was Corinne.

“I’ve made up my mind,” she said, “I’m going to leave Phil and live with you.”

“The hell you are,” said Dennis.

But he was enormously glad to see her. She took the burden of high resolutions off his back and he drew a great breath of relief. He kissed her.

“Come on in out of the rain,” he said.