Page:Stringer - Wine of Life.djvu/247



HE air of ghostliness about every-day objects, the vague sense of unreality in familiar things, taking possession of Storrow on his return to the city did not remain with him for any ponderable length of time. Old scenes and old habits promptly caught him up in their course, as the steel rails catch a car making a flying switch, and guided him back into a flat and familiar world.

Even Torrie's matter of urgency, so mysteriously with- held, failed to impress him, once he was back in the studio, as anything approaching the momentous. It was merely that The Seventh Wave company had been reorganized for a road tour and Krassler had sent a hurried call for her to rejoin the departing forces.

" And why couldn't that have been mentioned over the telephone ? " asked Storrow, resenting the natural in- ference that he had been deliberately manipulated, that for an ulterior purpose he had been kept on the tenter- hooks of anxiety. Yet Torrie's almost colourless face remained impassive, even before his unmodified note of mockery.

" I felt that you might not want me to go out with that road company. And long-distance wasn't the place for carrying on an argument about it especially after spending over an hour in finding you."

He stared at her, with a singular detachment of mind, unimpressed by the note of bitterness in her voice, for all its quietness. What did succeed in impressing him, however, was the weariness of the white face, heavy about the eyes and mouth, the listlessness that had im- 237