Immensely relieved at being left alone, Ethel locked the door again and went over to her dressing-table, where she repaired damage with quick, deft fingers. With another glance at the window,--a glance in which there was some impatience,--she arranged herself on the settee to wait.
No wonder Peter had made remarks about this room. It was deliciously characteristic of its owner. Large and airy; all its furniture was white and its hangings were of creamy cretonne covered with little rosebuds. The narrow bed was tucked away in a corner so that the writing-desk, the sofa and the revolving book-stand--on which stood a bowl of mammoth chrysanthemums--might dominate the room. Several mezzotints of Watts' pictures hung on the walls and a collection of framed illustrations of the Arabian Nights, by Dulac. The whole effect was one of naïve sophistication.
Through the open window the various sounds of the city's activity floated rather pleasantly. There was even a note of cheerfulness in the insistent bells of the trolley-cars on Madison Avenue and the chugging of a taxicab on the other side of the street. Before many minutes had gone by a rope ladder dangled outside the window, and this was followed immediately afterwards by the lithe and wiry figure of a boy. Wearing a rather sheepish expression he remained sitting on the sill, swinging his legs. "Hello!" said he. "How are you feeling?"
"There's some improvement to-night," said Ethel. "Won't you come in? Were you waiting for a signal?"
He was a nice boy, with a frank, honest face, a blunt nose and a laughing mouth. His hair was dark and thick, and his shoulders square. He was eighteen and he looked every day of it. He lived next door and was the son of a man who owned a line of steamships and a French mother, who was not on speaking terms with Mrs. Guthrie, owing to the fact that the Doctor had been obliged to remonstrate about her parrot. This expensive prodigy gave the most lifelike and frequent imitations of cats, trolley-cars, newsboys, sirens and other superfluous and distressing disturbances on the window-sill of the room which was next to his laboratory. So this boy and girl--unconsciously playing all over again the story of the Montagues and Capulets--met surreptitiously night after night, the boy coming over the roof and using the rope ladder--which had played its part in all the great romances. Was there any harm in him? Well, he was eighteen.