moon's broad path,
Bower's low house and its yellow-lighted panes, the silence, the
darkness.

Since morning he had done a thousand things. He had been to the hospital
and had yielded once more to the spell of its splendid machinery; he had
talked with Austin and the talk had been like wine to a thirsty soul. In
such an atmosphere a man would have little time to--think. He craved the
action, the excitement, the uplift.

He came back to Eve's prattle. "I told Winifred Ames we would come to her
little supper after the play. I was to have gone with her and Pip and
Jimmie Ford. Tony is away. But when you 'phoned, I called the first part
of it off. I wanted to have a little time just with you, Richard."

He smiled at her. "Who is Jimmie Ford?"

"A lovely youth who is in love with me--or with my money--he was at your
birthday party, Dicky Boy; don't you remember?"

"The Blue Butterfly? Yes. Is he another victim, Eve?"

She shrugged. "Who knows? If he is in love with me, he'll get hurt; if he
is in love with Aunt Maude's money, he won't get it. Oh, how can a woman
know?" The lightness left her voice. "Sometimes I think that I'll go off
somewhere and see if somebody won't love me for what I am, and not for
what he thinks Aunt Maude is going to leave me."

"And you with a string of scalps at your belt, and Pip ready at any
moment to die for you."

She nodded. "Pip is pure gold. Nobody can question his motives. And
anyhow he has more money than I can ever hope to have. But I am not in
love with him, Dicky."

"You are not in love with anybody. You are a cold-blooded little thing,
Eve. A man would need much fire to melt your ice."

"Would he?"

"You know he would."

He swept away from her petulances to the thing which was for the moment
uppermost in his mind. "I have had an offer, Eve, from Austin. He wants
an assistant, a younger man who can work into his practice. It is a
wonderful working opportunity."

"It would be wicked to throw it away," she told him, breathlessly,
"wicked, Richard."

"It looks that way. But there's mother to think of, and Crossroads has
come to mean a lot to me, Eve."

"Oh, but New York, Dicky! Think of the good times we'd have, and of your
getting into Austin's line of work and his patients. You would be rolling
in your own limousine before you'd know it."

Rolling in his own limousine! And missing the rhythm of big Ben's
measured trot----!

"_I think--she was the--most beautiful_--