* * * * *

One afternoon Paul made his way down Fifth avenue on foot.

The sky was unbelievably blue and a flashing brilliancy sparkled in all the splinters of color that embroidered themselves along the parquetry of the street.  The avenue has, at times, a magic of its own and today it was a swiftly flowing stream of brilliancy and life and laughter.  But this was a mood to which Paul Burton found no response.  His heart was attuned to echoes of a more somber tone—­and he was bound on a mission which was, for him, a bold one.  He was disobeying orders which until now he had not ventured to disobey.  Marcia Terroll had banished him from her presence.  Since that day in her apartment he had seen less of her than before and for many weeks now nothing at all.  Marcia, unlike Loraine Haswell, recognized that they could not meet without dangerous drifting, and that such drifting could end only in disaster, so at last she had forbidden his visiting her even occasionally and to all his arguments she had steadfastly shaken her head with gentle obduracy.

For a time they had met as they might have met had the interview in her apartment on the drizzly afternoon never occurred.  She had torn that page out of their chronicles of acquaintanceship, and assumed that it had never been included.  Her wit had sparkled for him and her individual charm had blossomed as though her life had never known a season other than spring and blossom-time.  Sometimes he found himself wondering if that afternoon had been actual.

He discovered himself using quaint phrases of her invention as part of his own conversational equipment, and often he found himself applauded for some flash of repartee which he knew was only a quotation from her.  But also he found himself incapable of that continuous self-restraint which she required of him under their agreement of a future basis.  He had his moments when he could no more avoid feeling and acting and declaring himself her lover than he could avoid later regretting them, and, for this inability, he had been exiled.

“To you,” she told him, “it means a minor thing—­but it’s not minor to me.  I have had unhappiness enough without risking more.  We must not see or write to each other.”  Paul knew nothing of what this decision cost her or of the many letters she had written to him—­and destroyed unmailed.

Now he was utterly miserable and his heart was aching for companionship outside the two houses where the mildew of misery tainted even the sunshine that came through the windows.  He craved the cheer and strength of a heart braver than his own, and in defiance of her orders he was going to see the woman in whose presence he should find these things; the woman whom he had not seen for months.

CHAPTER XXVI

As he reached Washington square it seemed that the quiet of the section held a sort of benediction, and such peace as hangs between old walls, where the fever of stress has passed and left in its wake a philosophy and a contentment.