“I’ve said a lot of stuff and I am likely to say a lot more, but I want you to say something to me. _Don’t you love me?_”
The word on his lips to him was as strange, as wonderful, as though it had been made for him.
“I guess I must love you, Dan. I guess I must have for a long time.”
“Why, ever since you used to come to the soda-fountain and ask for chocolate. You don’t know how sweet you were when you were a little boy.”
She put her slender hand against his hot cheek. “And you are nothing but a little boy now! I think I must be crazy!”
As he protested, as she listened intently to what his emotion taught him to say to her, she whispered close to his ear:
At a slight sound in the next room Letty Lane started as though the interruption really brought her to her senses, put her hand to her disheveled hair, and before she could prevent it, Dan had called Mrs Higgins to “come in,” and the woman, in response, came into the sitting-room. The boy went up to her and took her hands eagerly, and said:
“It’s all right, all right, Mrs. Higgins. Just think of it! She belongs to me!”
“Oh, don’t be a perfect lunatic, Dan,” the actress exclaimed, half laughing, half crying, “and don’t listen to him, Higgins. He’s just crazy.”
But the old woman’s eyes went bright at the boy’s face and tone. “I never was so glad of anything in my life.”
“As of what?” asked her mistress sharply, and the tone was so cold and so suddenly altered that Dan felt a chill of despair.
“Then,” said her mistress, “you ought to be ashamed of yourself. He’s only twenty-two, he doesn’t know anything about life. You must be crazy. He’s as mad as a March hare and he ought to be in school.”
Then, to their consternation, she burst into a passion of weeping; threw herself on Higgins’ breast and begged her to send Dan away—to send everybody away—and to let her die in peace.
In utter despair the boy obeyed the dresser’s motion to go, and his transport was changed into anxiety and dread. He hung about down-stairs in the Savoy for the rest of the afternoon, finally sending up to Higgins for news in sheer desperation, and the page fetched Blair a note in Letty Lane’s own hand. His eyes blurred so as he opened the sheet, he could hardly read the scrawl which said: