Tompkins bent forward earnestly over the table.
«You can,» he said impressively. «There’s no reason why you shouldn’t. Look here, if Roger’ll play nine holes of golf every day it’ll do wonders for him. He won’t know himself. He’ll do his work better, never get that tired, nervous feeling— What’s the matter?»
He broke off. Roger had perceptibly yawned.
«Roger,» cried Gretchen sharply, «there’s no need to be so rude. If you did what George said, you’d be a lot better off.» She turned indignantly to their host. «The latest is that he’s going to work at night for the next six weeks. He says he’s going to pull down the blinds and shut us up like hermits in a cave. He’s been doing it every Sunday for the last year; now he’s going to do it every night for six weeks.»
Tompkins shook his head sadly.
«At the end of six weeks,» he remarked, «he’ll be starting for the sanitarium. Let me tell you, every private hospital in New York is full of cases like yours. You just strain the human nervous system a little too far, and bang!—you’ve broken something. And in order to save sixty hours you’re laid up sixty weeks for repairs.» He broke off, changed his tone, and turned to Gretchen with a smile. «Not to mention what happens to you. It seems to me it’s the wife rather than the husband who bears the brunt of these insane periods of overwork.»
«I don’t mind,» protested Gretchen loyally.
«Yes, she does,» said Roger grimly; «she minds like the devil. She’s a shortsighted little egg, and she thinks it’s going to be forever until I get started and she can have some new clothes. But it can’t be helped. The saddest thing about women is that, after all, their best trick is to sit down and fold their hands.»
«Your ideas on women are about twenty years out of date,» said Tompkins pityingly. «Women won’t sit down and wait any more.»
«Then they’d better marry men of forty,» insisted Roger stubbornly. «If a girl marries a young man for love she ought to be willing to make any sacrifice within reason, so long as her husband keeps going ahead.»
«Let’s not talk about it,» said Gretchen impatiently. «Please, Roger, let’s have a good time just this once.»
When Tompkins dropped them in front of their house at eleven Roger and Gretchen stood for a moment on the sidewalk looking at the winter moon. There was a fine, damp, dusty snow in the air, and Roger drew a long breath of it and put his arm around Gretchen exultantly.
«I can make more money than he can,» he said tensely. «And I’ll be doing it in just forty days.»
«Forty days,» she sighed. «It seems such a long time—when everybody else is always having fun. If I could only sleep for forty days.»
«Why don’t you, honey? Just take forty winks, and when you wake up everything’ll be fine.»
She was silent for a moment.
«Roger,» she asked thoughtfully, «do you think George meant what he said about taking me horseback riding on Sunday?»
Roger frowned.
«I don’t know. Probably not—I hope to Heaven he didn’t.» He hesitated. «As a matter of fact, he made me sort of sore to-night—all that junk about his cold bath.»
With their arms about each other, they started up the walk to the house.
«I’ll bet he doesn’t take a cold bath every morning,» continued Roger ruminatively; «or three times a week, either.» He fumbled in his pocket for the key and inserted it in the lock with savage precision. Then he turned around defiantly. «I’ll bet he hasn’t had a bath for a month.»
II
After a fortnight of intensive work, Roger Halsey’s days blurred into each other and passed by in blocks of twos and threes and fours. From eight until 5.30 he was in his office. Then a half-hour on the commuting train, where he scrawled notes on the backs of envelopes under the dull yellow light. By 7.30 his crayons, shears, and sheets of white cardboard were spread over the living-room table, and he labored there with much grunting and sighing until midnight, while Gretchen lay on the sofa with a book, and the door-bell tinkled occasionally behind the drawn blinds. At twelve there was always an argument as to whether he would come to bed. He would agree to come after he had cleared up everything; but as he was invariably sidetracked by half a dozen new ideas, he usually found Gretchen sound asleep when he tiptoed up-stairs.
Sometimes it was three o’clock before Roger squashed his last cigarette into the overloaded ashtray, and he would undress in the darkness, disembodied with fatigue, but with a sense of triumph that he had lasted out another day.
Christmas came and went and he scarcely noticed that it was gone. He remembered it afterward as the day he completed the window-cards for Garrod’s shoes. This was one of the eight large accounts for which he was pointing in January—if he got half of them he was assured a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of business during the year.
But the world outside his business became a chaotic dream. He was aware that on two cool December Sundays George Tompkins had taken Gretchen horseback riding, and that another time she had gone out with him in his automobile to spend the afternoon skiing on the country-club hill. A picture of Tompkins, in an expensive frame, had appeared one morning on their bedroom wall. And one night he was shocked into a startled protest when Gretchen went to the theatre with Tompkins in town.
But his work was almost done. Daily now his layouts arrived from the printers until seven of them were piled and docketed in his office safe. He knew how good they were. Money alone couldn’t buy such work; more than he realized himself, it had been a labor of love.
December tumbled like a dead leaf from the calendar. There was an agonizing week when he had to give up coffee because it made his heart pound so. If he could hold on now for four days—three days——
On Thursday afternoon H. G. Garrod was to arrive in New York. On Wednesday evening Roger came home at seven to find Gretchen poring over the December bills with a strange expression in her eyes.
«What’s the matter?»
She nodded at the bills. He ran through them, his brow wrinkling in a frown.
«Gosh!»
«I can’t help it,» she burst out suddenly. «They’re terrible.»
«Well, I didn’t marry you because you were a wonderful housekeeper. I’ll manage about the bills some way. Don’t worry your little head over it.»
She regarded him coldly.
«You talk as if I were a child.»
«I have to,» he said with sudden irritation.
«Well, at least I’m not a piece of bric-à-brac that you can just put somewhere and forget.»
He knelt down by her quickly, and took her arms in his hands.
«Gretchen, listen!» he said breathlessly. «For God’s sake, don’t go to pieces now! We’re both all stored up with malice and reproach, and if we had a quarrel it’d be terrible. I love you, Gretchen. Say you love me—quick!»
«You know I love you.»
The quarrel was averted, but there was an unnatural tenseness all through dinner. It came to a climax afterward when he began to spread his working materials on the table.
«Oh, Roger,» she protested, «I thought you didn’t have to work to-night.»
«I didn’t think I’d have to, but something came up.»
«I’ve invited George Tompkins over.»
«Oh, gosh!» he exclaimed. «Well, I’m sorry, honey, but you’ll have to phone him not to come.»
«He’s left,» she said. «He’s coming straight from town. He’ll be here any minute now.»
Roger groaned. It occurred to him to send them both to the movies, but somehow the suggestion stuck on his lips. He did not want her at the movies; he wanted her here, where he could look up and know she was by his side.
George Tompkins arrived breezily at eight o’clock.
«Aha!» he cried reprovingly, coming into the room. «Still at it.»
Roger agreed coolly that he was.
«Better quit—better quit before you have to.»
He sat down with a long sigh of physical comfort and lit a cigarette. «Take it from a fellow who’s looked into the question scientifically. We can stand so much, and then—bang!»
«If you’ll excuse me»—Roger made his voice as polite as possible—»I’m going up-stairs and finish this work.»
«Just as you like, Roger.» George waved his hand carelessly. «It isn’t that I mind. I’m the friend of the family and I’d just as soon see the missus as the mister.» He smiled playfully. «But if I were you, old boy, I’d put away my work and get a good night’s sleep.»
When Roger had spread out his materials on the bed up-stairs he found that he could still hear the rumble and murmur of their voices through the thin floor. He began wondering what they found to talk about. As he plunged deeper into his work his mind had a tendency to revert sharply to his question, and several times he arose and paced nervously up and down the room.
The bed was ill adapted to his work. Several times the paper slipped from the board on which it rested, and the pencil punched through. Everything was wrong to-night. Letters and figures blurred before his eyes, and as an accompaniment to the beating of his temples came those persistent murmuring voices.
At ten he realized that he had done nothing for more than an hour, and with a sudden exclamation he gathered together his papers, replaced them in his portfolio, and went down-stairs. They were sitting together on the sofa when
