gratitude.
He'll _do_ something."

"I don't want you to get into a mood where you'll be awfully
depressed if I should fail."

"But you'll not fail."

It was evident that Spenser, untaught by experience and
flattered into exaggerating his importance by the solicitude
and deference of doctors and nurses to a paying invalid, had
restored to favor his ancient enemy--optimism, the certain
destroyer of any man who does not shake it off. She went away,
depressed and worried. When she should come back with the only
possible news, what would be the effect upon him--and he still
in a critical stage? As the afternoon must be given to
business, she decided to go straight uptown, hoping to catch
Fitzalan before he went out to lunch. And twenty minutes after
making this decision she was sitting in the anteroom of a suite
of theatrical offices in the Empire Theater building. The girl
in attendance had, as usual, all the airs little people assume
when they are in close, if menial, relations with a person who,
being important to them, therefore fills their whole small
horizon. She deigned to take in Susan's name and the letter.
Susan seated herself at the long table and with the seeming of
calmness that always veiled her in her hours of greatest
agitation, turned over the pages of the theatrical journals and
magazines spread about in quantity.

After perhaps ten silent and uninterrupted minutes a man
hurried in from the outside hall, strode toward the frosted
glass door marked "Private." With his hand reaching for the
knob he halted, made an impatient gesture, plumped himself down
at the long table--at its distant opposite end. With a sweep of
the arm he cleared a space wherein he proceeded to spread
papers from his pocket and to scribble upon them furiously.
When Susan happened to glance at him, his head was bent so low
and his straw hat was tilted so far forward that she could not
see his face. She observed that he was dressed attractively in
an extremely light summer suit of homespun; his hands were
large and strong and ruddy--the hands of an artist, in good
health. Her glance returned to the magazine. After a few
minutes she looked up. She was startled to find that the man
was giving her a curious, searching inspection--and that he was
Brent, the playwright--the same fascinating face, keen,
cynical, amused--the same seeing eyes, that, in the Cafe Martin
long ago, had made her feel as if she were being read to he