"Why, what are we stopping here for, dear?"
Henry's laugh had a pronounced overtone. "To meet Mr. Archer. I thought you'd like to be in on it."
"In on what?" She caught his arm. "Henry! Has something happened? Has it?" She stared at him, and as she recognized what might be hidden behind his expression of exquisite, unreserved joy, she was almost as frightened as if he had looked despairing instead of joyful.
"It wasn't settled until last week," he said, still with that wide, speculative smile, like a baby's. "It _really_ wasn't settled until Saturday. And it won't be _positively_ settled until we've seen Archer.... And there he is waiting for us! I couldn't get him before--he was in the country for the week-end."
With no clear recollection of how she got there, she was sitting in Henry's tiny office, and Mr. Archer was sitting beside her, and Henry was standing at his desk, pawing over a heap of ledgers and cash-books. To Anna, there was something commanding in his attitude, something more of crest than she had ever seen in him, even during the early period of his intrepid youth. And yet she could see, too, that his hands were a trifle unsteady, and that his lips betrayed an immense excitement.
"Mr. Archer," he said. "There's no use waiting until the first of the year. Either we've made good by this time, or we never will. Here's the books. They'll show a net profit, including Saturday's deposit, of ten thousand five hundred."
Anna turned weak and faint, and she wanted to laugh and cry in the same breath, but she gripped the arms of her chair, and clung fast to what was left of her poise. If Henry had a miracle to report, Anna must hear it.
"It's a matter of interpretation," he went on, with his voice shaking for an instant. "And you're the interpreter. It came up so suddenly last week that I couldn't get hold of you. But I took a chance, anyway.... Does a lease count?"
"Yes. If I leased part of the theatre to somebody, would the income from that count?"
During the resultant silence, Anna distinctly heard her own heart beating. She looked at Mr. Archer, and saw that his brows were drawn down, and that his eyes were distant. Fearfully, she hung on his reply.
"That's a delicate question, Henry. You were supposed to make your profit from the operation of the theatre."