Page:Oppenheim--The cinema murder.djvu/133

Rh was just as he had expected to find her. There was nothing in her manner to indicate that they had not parted yesterday.

"Welcome to New York, my dramatist!" she exclaimed. "I am here, you see, to the day, almost to the hour."

He stood there, holding her hands. His eyes seemed to be devouring her.

"Go on talking to me," he begged. "Let me hear you speak. You can't think—you can't imagine how often in the middle of the night, I have waked up and thought of you, and the cold shivers have come because, after all, I fancied that you must be a dream, that you didn't really exist, that that voyage had never existed. Go on talking."

"You foolish person!" she laughed, patting his hands affectionately. "But then, of course, you are a little overwrought. I am very real, I can assure you. I have been in Chicago, playing, but there hasn't been a night when I haven't thought of the times when we used to talk together in the darkness, when you let me into your life, and I made up my mind to try and help you. Foolish person! Sit down in that great easy-chair and draw it up to the fire."

He sank into it with a little sigh of content. She threw herself on to the couch opposite to him. Her hands drooped down a little wearily on either side, her head was thrown back. Against the background of rose-silk cushions, her cheeks seemed unexpectedly pale.

"I am tired with travelling," she murmured, "and