The next thing was a note of farewell, to be found the following morning on her unused pillow. "I am going away with Mr. Adair," she wrote, "taking my own life in my own hands for better or worse. Whether we are to be friends--you and I--depends entirely upon yourself, although alienation from you will be very hard for me to bear. Forgive me if you can, and do not let your disappointment and chagrin embitter you against me; or what would hurt me almost as much--against him. To-night when I kissed you it was good-by, and if it is for ever it will be your own fault, and very, very cruel, for I love you, dearest father, I love you. Ever your devoted Phyllis."
By half-past nine everything was ready; and it was with a consuming impatience that she went into her boudoir with Watch, and ensconsed herself on the sofa to wait. A confidential Russian poodle can be of great help to a young lady in distress. Watch’s sympathy; Watch’s certainty of everything coming out right; Watch’s implied determination to soften the blow to Mr. Ladd; Watch’s willingness to whine over the general tragedy of things--all were whimsically comforting. Best of all, he could listen for ever and ever with one ear cocked up, and never lose for an instant his air of highly gratified interest. And what didn’t he hear during that hour and three quarters on the sofa! What secrets of longing and tenderness, of girlish hopes, of girlish dreams, of delicious falterings and trepidations--all breathed into that woolly ear!
Then came the suffocating moment of departure--the quieting of an unruly friend--the peeping from the door; the tip-toeing down the stairs; the panicky stops to cower and listen; the stealthy passage of the great dim hall; the groping for bolts and chains; the heavy door swinging heavily back; the cold, dark, starry night beyond; the egress into it; the wild sense of escape and freedom; the sound of gravel under the eager little feet; the gate-way; the wide silent Avenue; the glimmering lights of the cab at the farther corner; and--
"Yes, I’m Tom Merguelis, Miss. Jump in--everything is ready."
She discovered herself sitting beside a very tall, very thin young man, who smiled down at her in a quizzical, friendly manner not unsuggestive of the Cheshire Cat. That vague, deprecatory grin was as much a part of Mr. Merguelis as his sandy hair, his retreating chin, and the whole amiable vacancy of his expression. His youth had been passed before the public as "assistant" to Professor Theophilus Blitz, the exhibiting hypnotist, who was accustomed nightly to run pins into him; make him drink kerosene under the impression it was beer; smack his lips over furniture-polish; eat potato peelings for sausages; bark like a dog, meow like a cat, make love to a bolster, and generally disport himself to the astonishment and horror of clodhopper audiences. Six years of this had left Tommy without a digestion, and that fixed and bewildered grin, which to Phyllis, under the unusual circumstances of their meeting, seemed to her not without a satiric quality.