The Breaking Point - Page 240/275

She went to the choir master after the service to hand in her

resignation. And did not, because it had occurred to her that it might

look, to use Nina's word, as though she were crushed. Crushed! That was

funny.

Wallie Sayre was waiting for her outside, and she went up with him to

lunch, and afterwards they played golf. They had rather an amusing game,

and once she had to sit down on a bunker and laugh until she was weak,

while he fought his way out of a pit. Crushed, indeed!

So the weaving went on, almost completed now. With Wallie Sayre biding

his time, but fairly sure of the result. With Jean Melis happening on

a two-days' old paper, and reading over and over a notice addressed to

him. With Leslie Ward, neither better nor worse than his kind, seeking

adventure in a bypath, which was East 56th Street. And with Dick

wandering the streets of New York after twilight, and standing once with

his coat collar turned up against the rain outside of the Metropolitan

Club, where the great painting of his father hung over a mantelpiece.

Now that he was near Beverly, Dick hesitated to see her. He felt no

resentment at her long silence, nor at his exile which had resulted

from it. He made excuses for her, recognized his own contribution to

the catastrophe, knew, too, that nothing was to be gained by seeing her

again. But he determined finally to see her once more, and then to go

away, leaving her to peace and to success.

She would know now that she had nothing to fear from him. All he wanted

was to satisfy the hunger that was in him by seeing her, and then to go

away.

Curiously, that hunger to see her had been in abeyance while Bassett

was with him. It was only when he was alone again that it came up; and

although he knew that, he was unconscious of another fact, that every

word, every picture of her on the great boardings which walled in every

empty lot, everything, indeed, which brought her into the reality of the

present, loosened by so much her hold on him out of the past.

When he finally went to the 56th Street house it was on impulse. He had

meant to pass it, but he found himself stopping, and half angrily made

his determination. He would follow the cursed thing through now and get

it over. Perhaps he had discounted it too much in advance, waited too

long, hoped too much. Perhaps it was simply that that last phase was

already passing. But he felt no thrill, no expectancy, as he rang the

bell and was admitted to the familiar hall.