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Lemoyne possessed a variety of gifts, but the gift of letter-writing, in an extended form, was not among them. He said all he had to say in four moderate pages. "Yours received," he wrote. "Am glad the year has opened up so interestingly for you. Of course I want to come down as soon as I can, if I can, and be with you."
He had had the forethought to plead an exceptionally early engagement, and thus he avoided meeting, after the strain of the evening before, any of the various units of the household. He and Lemoyne, draping their parti-colored pajamas over the foot of the bedstead, left the chintz chamber at seven and walked out into the new day.
Lemoyne was commonly neither rough nor outspoken; but here was an emergency, involving his own interests, which must be dealt with decisively. Cope seemed to feel salvation on the way. Perhaps that was why he still did so little to save himself. He took the new room; he had one meeting with Amy; and he left for home at least two days before he was strictly entitled to do so.
On the contrary, he almost appeared to be pleased. He may have felt that Lemoyne had shown himself in a tolerably clear light, and that it was for Cope, should he choose, to take heed. Two days later, Randolph gave his impression of the performance to Foster. "It's just what I should have expected," declared the cripple acrimoniously.
If Cope really intended to go to that studio, it was just as well that there should be an impassioned poetess in the background. And it was just as well that Cope should know she was there. Lemoyne took a line not unlike Mrs. Phillips' own. "I only wish there were more of them," he declared, looking up from his desk.
Foster, sitting beside her, suddenly raised his shade and peered out questioningly, both at the singers and at his sister-in-law. He seemed surprised and more. Pearson was surprised too, but kept his applause within limits. However, he praised Lemoyne for his accompaniment.
Then he had thrown his face into his pillow and left one ear for the reply. "She is a clinger," returned Lemoyne. "She will cling until she is loosened by something or somebody. Then she will cling to the second somebody as hard as she did to the first. I'm not so sure that it's you as an individual especially." Cope had now no self-love to consider, no self-esteem to guard.
It was from Amy Leffingwell. Cope read it, folded his arms on his desk, bowed his head on his arms, and, being alone, gave a half-sob. Then he lifted his head, with face illumined and soul refreshed. Amy had asked for an end to their engagement. "What does she say?" asked Lemoyne, an hour later. "She says what you say!" exclaimed Cope with shining eyes and a trace of half-hysteric bravado.
Lemoyne felt the big bare room bare save for a piano and a fringe of chairs and settles, large and small as a stage; and he surmised that he, the new-comer, was expected to exhibit himself on it. He became consciously the actor. He tried now the assertive note, and now the quiet note; somehow the quiet was the louder of the two.
Then Bert can look after him a little more and we a little less." Lemoyne presented himself to the combined family gaze as a young man of twenty-seven or so, with dark, limpid eyes, a good deal of dark, wavy hair, and limbs almost too plumply well-turned. To end with, he carried two inches of short black stubble under his nose. He was a type which one may admire or not.
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