Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/314

 It was not in the position in which she left it when Gregg returned about half-past five, nevertheless it was the first thing he saw on the rack,—Marjorie's writing!

He seized the envelope and swung about, making sure he was alone, then tore it open.

"She's back," he had thought, in his first startle at seeing his name in her writing. Back from—from what, he did not know; but she was back! Now, holding her words before him, he realized she wasn't back; it was only that Bill had found her last night; and so she was "here" this morning at nine-thirty because, having been found by Bill, she now wanted him.

"She's not back," he said to himself, almost aloud; yet "Here at 9.30." Something about that—about her starting with that and putting it in that way, "here"—was good. She'd come here herself; and he thought where he had been at nine-thirty and how uselessly; he stepped into the old, faded front parlor to look at the ticking, marble clock, for Gregg did not have a watch these days. Now it was twenty-five minutes to six; and it must be almost another hour, at best, before he could reach her; for Gregg, who had no watch, neither had his partly-paid-for car; nor even taxi fare. "Street cars have got to do," he calculated with himself, and their slowness seemed already to seize and cramp him.

The minute before, when he first saw her writing, he could have run up the flights of stairs two steps at a time with her note in his hand; but instead, he immediately had opened it, and now he climbed slowly, thinking, feeling—feeling too much, too much, he accused himself; and too much afraid.

In his room, he was slow with his clumsy appur-