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Vickers with a sensation of disgust foresaw a scene there on the pavement, and he could feel the shrinking of the woman by his side. "Good evening, Mr. Conry," Vickers said coolly, turning to give Mrs. Conry his hand. A glance into Conry's eyes had convinced him that the man was in a drunken temper, and his one thought was to save her from a public brawl.
Vickers understood the meaning of this condition and disliked the position, but consented in his desire to give Mrs. Conry every chance in his power. Others understood the situation, and disliked it, among them Isabelle. Nannie Lawton threw at her across a dinner-table the remark: "When is Vick going to offer his 'Love Among the Ruins'? Mrs. Conry is the 'ruins, I suppose!"
Conry was dreadful ordinary," "not half good enough for our adorable Vickers to afficher himself with." Nevertheless, she was very sweet to the beautiful Mrs. Conry, as was Bessie's wont to be with pretty nearly all the world. It was late on their return, and the Falkners left them at the station.
Conry took it negligently in her white hand. "You will come later?" she said, smiling back at the young man. Sitting crowded in front of Arragno's and sipping a liqueur, Fosdick remarked to Vickers: "So you have run across the Conry? Of course I know her. I saw her in Munich the first time. The little girl still with her? Then it was Vienna.... She's got as far as Rome!
Vickers exclaimed in a low voice, taking from his pocket a little camera. As he tiptoed ahead of Mrs. Conry to get his picture before the pilgrim should rise, he saw the intense yearning on the man's face. Beckoning to his companion, Vickers put the camera into his pocket and passed on, Mrs. Conry following, shrinking to the opposite side of the way, a look of aversion on her mobile face.
"Yes, we'll put it through! The Songs of the Cities." He repeated the words with sentimental visions of the hours of their composition. "And then I have some more, Spanish songs. They take, you know! And folk-songs." Mrs. Conry talked on eagerly of her ambitions until Vickers left, having arranged for Isabelle to call the next day.
"Who is she?" the old man asked gently. "Mrs. Conry " "But she's a married woman, isn't she, Vick?" "She has a dirty brute of a husband she's left him forever!" The Colonel's blue eyes opened in speechless surprise, as his son went on to tell rapidly what had happened the previous night. Before he had finished the old man interrupted by a low exclamation: "But she is a married woman, Vickers!"
Finally Stacia Conry wrote, a little note: she was to be in St. Louis on the fourteenth for a short time and hoped that he would call on her at the hotel. A perfectly proper, colorless little note, written in an unformed hand, with a word or two misspelled, the kind of note that gave no indication of the writer, but seemed like the voice of a stranger.
First of all she must telegraph for Delia to meet them somewhere, she must have the child with her at once; and they must leave the city before Conry could find her and make trouble.... And he must tell the Colonel....
No matter how he tries, Vick can never be like you, and why should he be any way?" "It won't have done any harm," the old man replied dubiously. "We'll see!" First he made his son independent of salary or allowance by giving him a small fortune in stocks and bonds. Then one day, while Mrs. Conry was still in the city, he suggested that Vickers might expect a considerable vacation in the summer.
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