Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/236

 Five minutes after Lemoyne's departure Cope heard the telephone ringing downstairs, ant presently a patient, middle-aged man knocked at th door and told him the call was for him.

Cope sighed apprehensively and went down. Of course it was Amy. Would he not come over for an hour? Everybody was away, and they could have a quiet talk together.

Cope, conscious of others in the house, replied cautiously. Lemoyne, he said, had gone out and left him with a deskful of themes: tiresome routine work, but necessary, and immensely absorptive of time. He was afraid that he could scarcely come this evening

Amy's voice took on a new tone. Why, she seemed to be feeling, must Arthur Lemoyne be mentioned, and mentioned so early? Yet Bertram had put him—instinctively, unconsciously—at the head of the little verbal procession just begun.

Cope's response was dry and meagre; free speech was impossible over a lodging-house telephone set in the public hall. Amy, who knew little of Cope's immediate surroundings at the moment, went on in accents of protest and of grievance, and Cope went on replying in a half-hushed voice as non-committally as he was able. He dwelt more and more on the trying details of his work in words which conveyed no additional information to any fellow-dwellers who might overhear.

"You haven't been to see me for a week," came Amy's voice petulantly, indignantly.