"Who is it?"
Her voice left her for an instant; her dry lips made no answer.
"Who is it?" he repeated in his steady, pleasant voice.
"It is I."
There was absolute silence--so long that it frightened her. But before she could speak again his voice was sounding in her ears, patient, unconvinced:
"I don"t recognise your voice. Who am I speaking to?"
"Sylvia."
There was no response, and she spoke again:
"I only wanted to say good morning. It is afternoon now; is it too late to say good morning?"
"No. I"m badly rattled. Is it you, Sylvia?"
"Indeed it is. I am in my own room. I--I thought--"
"Yes, I am listening."
"I don"t know what I did think. Is it necessary for me to telephone you a minute account of the mental processes which ended by my calling you up--out of the vasty deep?"
The old ring in her voice hinting of the laughing undertone, the same trailing sweetness of inflection--could he doubt his senses any longer?
"I know you, now," he said.
"I should think you might. I should very much like to know how you are--if you don"t mind saying?"
"Thank you. I seem to be all right. Are you all right, Sylvia?"
"Shamefully and outrageously well. What a season, too! Everybody else is in rags--make-up rags! Isn"t that a disagreeable remark? But I"ll come to the paint-brush too, of course.
We all do. Doesn"t anybody ever see you any more?"
She heard him laugh to himself unpleasantly; then: "Does anybody want to?"
"Everybody, of course! You know it. You always were spoiled to death."
"Yes--to death."
"Stephen!"
"Yes?"
"Are you becoming cynical?"
"I? Why should I?"
"You are! Stop it! Mercy on us! If that is what is going on in a certain house on lower Fifth Avenue, facing the corner of certain streets, it"s time somebody dropped in to--"
"To--what?"
"To the rescue! I"ve a mind to do it myself. They say you are not well, either."
"Who says that?"
"Oh, the usual little ornithological c.o.c.katrice--or, rather, cantatrice.
Don"t ask me, because I won"t tell you. I always tell you too much, anyway. Don"t I?"
"Do you?"
"Of course I do. Everybody spoils you and so do I."
"Yes--I am rather in that way, I suppose."
"What way?"
"Oh--spoiled."
"Stephen!"
"Yes?"
And in a lower voice: "Please don"t say such things--will you?"
"No."
"Especially to me."
"Especially to you. No, I won"t, Sylvia."
And, after a hesitation, she continued sweetly:
"I wonder what you were doing, all alone in that old house of yours, when I called you up?"
"I? Let me see. Oh, I was superintending some packing."
"Are you going off somewhere?"
"I think so."
"Where?"
"I don"t know, Sylvia."
"Stephen, how absurd! You must know where you are going! If you mean that you don"t care to tell me--"