The Fighting Chance

"Want you! You've got to!"

"Stephen, it isn't best."

"It is best."

She turned to him impulsively: "Oh, I do want to so much! Do you think I might? It is perfectly delicious to see you again. I--you have no idea--"

"Yes, I have," he said sternly.

They turned, walking past the fountain toward Fifth Avenue again. Furtively she glanced at his hands with the city pallor on them as they grasped the cross-bars of the crutches, then looked up at his worn face. He was much thinner, but now in the softly fading light the shadows under the eyes and cheek-bones seemed less sharp, his face fuller and more boyish; the contour of head and shoulders, the short, crisp hair were as she remembered--and the old charm held her, the old fascination grew, tightening her throat, stealing through every vein, stirring her pulses, awakening imperceptibly once more the best in her. The twilight of a thousand years seemed to slip from the world as she looked out at it through eyes opening from a long, long sleep; the marble arch burned rosy in the evening glow; a fairy haze hung over the enchanted avenue, stretching away, away into the blue magic of the city of dreams.

"There is no use," she said under her breath; "I can't go back to Leila. Stephen, the dreadful part of it is that I--I wish she were in Jericho! I wish the whole world were in Ballyhoo, and you and I alone once more!"

Under their gay laughter quivered the undertone of excitement. Sylvia said: "I'd like to talk to you all alone. It won't do, of course; but I may say what I'd like--mayn't I? What time is it? If I'm dining with you we've got to have Leila for convention's sake, if not from motives of sheer decency, which you and I seem to lack, Stephen."

"We lack decency," said Siward, "and we're proud of it. As for Leila, I am going to arrange for her very simply but very beautifully. Plank will take care of her. Sylvia! There's not a soul in town and we can be as imprudent as we please."

"No, we can't. Agatha's at the Santa Regina. She came down with us."

"But we are not going to dine at the Santa Regina. We're going where Agatha wouldn't intrude her colourless nose--to a thoroughly unfashionable and selectly common resort overlooking the classic Harlem; and we're going to whiz thither in Plank's car, and remain thither until you yawn for mercy, whence we will return thence--"

"Stephen, you silly! I'm perfectly mad to go with you!"

"You'll be madder when you get there, if the table has not improved."