o sleep as a stone disappears into water.

As Martin drew the clothes over her thinly clad shoulder, something
touched him. It was like a tap on the heart. Before he knew what he was
doing, he had turned out the light, gone into the sitting room, the
passage, down the stairs and into the silent street. At top speed he
ran into Sixth Avenue, yelled to a cab that was slipping along the
trolley lines and told the driver to go to East Sixty-seventh Street
for all that he was worth.

Joan wanted him.

Joan!

Joan heard the cab drive up and stop, heard Martin sing out "That's all
right," open and shut the front door and mount the stairs; heard him go
quickly to her room and knock.

She went out and called "Marty, Marty," and stood on the threshold of
his dressing room, smiling a welcome. She was glad, beyond words glad,
and surprised. There had seemed to be no chance of seeing him that
morning.

Martin came along the passage with his characteristic light tread and
drew up short. He looked anxious.

"You wanted me?" he said.

And Joan held out her hand. "I did and do, Marty. But how did you
guess?"

"I didn't guess; I knew." And he held her hand nervously.

She looked younger and sweeter than ever in her blue silk dressing gown
and shorter in her heelless slippers. What a kid she was, after all, he
thought.

"How amazing!" she said. "I wonder how?"

He shook his head. "I dunno--just as I did the first time, when I tore
through the woods and found you on the hill."

"Isn't that wonderful! Do you suppose I shall always be able to get you
when I want you very much?"

"Yes, always."

"Why?"

She had gone back into the dressing room. The light was on her face.
Her usual expression of elfish impertinence was not there. She was the
girl of the stolen meetings once more, the girl whose eyes reflected
the open beauty of what Martin had called the big cathedral. For all
that, she was the girl who had hurt him to the soul, shown him her
door, played that trick upon him at the Ritz and sent him adrift full
of the spirit of "Who cares?" which was her fetish. It was in his heart
to say: "Because I adore you! Because I am so much yours that you have
only to think my name for me to hear it across the world as if you had
shouted it through a giant megaphone! Because whatever I do and
whatever you do, I shall love you!" But she had hurt him twice. She had
cut him to the very core. He couldn't forget. He was too proud to l