"Ladies and gentlemen," she quavered, "this is a high-class concert; three dollars each for tickets, please. Helen, you don't know how to sing, but--don't learn! Come Pros."--the big drops ran down her cheeks; "I've got to look up a story in the morning."
"Wait a minute," said Reid, his long, delicately shaped fingers trembling. "Let me recover on something."
Picking up Kitty's banjo, he smote the strings uncertainly and half sang, half declaimed:--
"'With my Hya! Heeya! Heeya! Hullah! Haul! Oh, the green that thunders aft along the deck! Are you sick of towns and men? You must sign and sail again, For it's Johnny Bowlegs, pack your kit and trek!'
"By Jove! Kipling's right; nothing like a banjo, is there? Now then, Young Person, I'm with you. Good night; good night!"
While his voice was still echoing down the stairway, Miss Bryant came running up again.
"Say, got a photograph of yourself, Helen?" she asked.
She had apparently quite recovered from her emotion, and her tone expressed an odd mixture of business and affection.
"I believe if I showed Big Tom a picture of you," she explained, "he'd run a story--there's your science, you know, and your music--on the Society page, maybe."
"But I haven't any picture; at least, any that you'd want--only a few taken months ago, for my father."
"Oh, they aren't good; they--they don't look like me. Besides, I really couldn't let you print my picture, Cadge."
"All right. Good night, then; good night, Kitty."
"Perhaps I was just the least bit homesick; I'm glad you've come," Helen said to me at good-by.
She did not withdraw the hand I pressed. She was still under the excitement of the music; the song had left on her face a dreamy tenderness.
"Don't you like Cadge?" she asked, checking with shy evasiveness the words I would have spoken. "She can do anything--sing, talk modern Greek and Chinese--Cadge is wonderful."
"I know some one more wonderful. Helen, when did you begin to sing?"
"I don't sing; to-night was the first time I ever tried before any one but Kitty. Did I sing well?"
"Don't! Don't!" she laughed. "Remember your promise."
And with that she ran away from the door where I stood, and I came directly home. Home, to set down these notes; to wonder; to doubt; to pinch myself and try to believe that I am alive.