Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/147



whole month passed before John sat again at midnight in the Roman chair with Marien vis-à-vis upon her heaped-up cushions. Many things may happen in a month. Many did in this. For John it was a month of progress in his art. Though the People's Stock Company had passed out of existence within two weeks after Marien Dounay's departure from it, John had done so well that he found no difficulty in securing an engagement as heavy man across the bay in Oakland with the Sampson Stock, the grade of which was higher and its permanency well established.

It was also a month of progress in his passion for Marien Dounay, although during all those thirty days he did not see her once. In the meantime imagination fed him. Every memory of that night and every deduction from those memories fanned the flame of his infatuation. Each in itself was slight, but they were like a thousand gossamer webs. Once spun, their combined holding power was as the strength of many cables.

Take, for instance, the environment in which he found her. It spoke gratifyingly to him of a genuinely good, modest nature to see that she shrank away from the garish theatrical hotels to this quiet nest with Julie. It revealed a true woman's instinct for domesticity not only surviving but flourishing in this vagabond life to which her profession compelled her.

And yet how unlike the life of the fine women he had known in the old First Church. It would have so shocked