They said nothing so persistently that the wordless minutes throbbed into hours; through the windows the red west sent a glowing tentacle into the room, searching the gloom for them.

It fell, warm, across her upturned throat, in the half light.

For her head lay back on his shoulder; his head was bent down, lips pressed to the white hands crushed fragrantly between his own.

A star came out and looked at them with astonishment; in a little while the sky was thronged with little stars, all looking through the window at them.

Her maid knocked, backed out hastily and fled, distracted.  Then Ferdinand arrived with a plumber.

Later the butler came.  They did not notice him until he ventured to cough and announce dinner.

The interruptions were very annoying, particularly when she was summoned to the telephone to speak to her father.

“What is it, dad?” she asked impatiently.

“Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes,” she answered, carelessly; “we are all right, dad.  Goodbye.”

“We?  Who the devil is ’We’?”

“Mr. Vanderdynk and I. We’re taking my maid and coming down to Tuxedo this evening together.  I’m in a hurry now.”

“What!!!”

“Oh, it’s all right, dad.  Here, Killian, please explain things to my father.”

Vanderdynk released her hand and picked up the receiver as though it had been a live wire.

“Is that you, Mr. Carr?” he began—­stopped short, and stood listening, rigid, bewildered, turning redder and redder as her father’s fluency increased.  Then, without a word, he hooked up the receiver.

“Is it all right?” she asked calmly.  “Was dad—­vivacious?”

The young man said:  “I’d rather go back into that elevator than go to Tuxedo....  But—­I’m going.”

“So am I,” said Bushwyck Carr’s daughter, dropping both hands on her lover’s shoulders....  “Was he really very—­vivid?”

“Very.”

The telephone again rang furiously.

He bent his head; she lifted her face and he kissed her.

After a while the racket of the telephone annoyed them, and they slowly moved away out of hearing.

VIII

“IN HEAVEN AND EARTH”

The Green Mouse Stirs

“I’ve been waiting half an hour for you,” observed Smith, dryly, as Beekman Brown appeared at the subway station, suitcase in hand.

“It was a most extraordinary thing that detained me,” said Brown, laughing, and edging his way into the ticket line behind his friend where he could talk to him across his shoulder; “I was just leaving the office, Smithy, when Snuyder came in with a card.”

“Oh, all right—­of course, if——­”

“No, it was not a client; I must be honest with you.”

“Then you had a terrible cheek to keep me here waiting.”

“It was a girl,” said Beekman Brown.