The Fighting Chance

Then a bitter impatience swept her, and a dawning fear, too; for she had set her foot on the fallen mask, and the impulse rendered her reckless.

"Why don't you speak?" she said. "Yes, I have a right to know. I care for him as much as you do. Why don't you answer me? I tell you I care for him!"

"Do you?" he said in a dull voice. "Then help me out, if you can, for I don't know what to do; and if I did, I haven't the authority of friendship as my warrant. He is in New York. He did go to the country; and, at his home, the servants suppose he is still away. But he isn't; he is here, alone, and sick--sick of his old sickness. I saw him, and"--Plank rested his head on his hand, dropping his eyes--"and he didn't know me. I--I do not think he will remember that he met me, or that I spoke. And--I could do nothing, absolutely nothing. And I don't know where he is. He will go home after a while. I call--every day--to see--see what can be done. But if he were there I would not know what to do. When he does go home I won't know what to say--what to try to do. … And that is an answer to your question, Miss Landis. I give it, because you say you care for him as I do. Will you advise me what to do?--you, who are more entitled than I am to know the truth, because he has given you the friendship which he has as yet not accorded to me."

But Sylvia, dry-eyed, dry-lipped, could find no voice to answer; and after a little while they rose and moved through the fragrant gloom toward the sparkling lights beyond.

Her voice came back as they entered the brilliant rooms: "I should like to find Grace Ferrall," she said very distinctly. "Please keep the others off, Mr. Plank."

Her small hand on his arm lay with a weight out of all proportion to its size. Fair head averted, she no longer guided him with that impalpable control; it was he who had become the pilot now, and he steered his own way through the billowy ocean of silk and lace, master of the course he had set, heavily bland to the interrupter and the importunate from whom she turned a deaf ear and dumb lips, and lowered eyes that saw nothing.

Fleetwood had missed his dance with her, but she scarcely heard his eager complaints. Quarrier, coldly inquiring, confronted them; was passed almost without recognition, and left behind, motionless, looking after them out of his narrowing, black-fringed eyes of a woman.