It was long past midnight when he cautiously pushed open his door on Mrs. Hubbard’s third story. The light from a street lamp, shining through the shutterless window, showed him Laura Lou in bed, asleep or pretending to be; and he undressed as noiselessly as he could and lay down beside her. He was used to her ways now: he knew she would not begin questioning him till the next morning, and he lay there, his arms crossed under his head, staring up at the cracked and blotched ceiling, and reliving with feverish vividness the hours he had spent with Halo Tarrant. He did not mean to tell Laura Lou where he had been; to do so would only grieve her. Besides, she would never believe him when he told her that all those hours had been spent in talk: the absorbing, illuminating, inexhaustible exchange of confidences and ideas. Laura Lou could not imagine what anybody could have to say that would take that length of time. . . . And Vance himself could hardly believe that this woman, without whom life was so lame and incomplete a business, this woman whom he had so missed and longed for, and thought he hated, could have calmed his vehemence, cast a spell over his throbbing senses, and kept him with her, enriched and satisfied, by the mere magic of her attentive understanding . . . .
He had told her everything — tumbled out all his distresses and anxieties, the misery of his marriage, the material cares that made his work so difficult, his secret resentment of what had appeared to him her hardness and indifference when they had parted at the Willows. Nothing had been farther from his intention than to speak to her in this way: he had sought her out as the one confidante of his literary projects, had imagined that pride and loyalty forbade any personal confession. But once his reserve had broken down there rushed through the breach all the accumulated distress of the long months since he had seen her. The exquisite solace of confessing everything effaced all scruples and reserves. He was as powerless as ever to conceal his soul from her . . . and with every word he felt her understanding reaching out to him, soothing the way for what he had to tell. Instead of the resistance against which he was always instinctively arming himself, which made him involuntarily deform every phrase to fit it to a mind so different from his own that there was not one point where they dovetailed, or even touched — instead of that he felt the relief of knowing that his clumsiest word, his lamest statement, would be smoothed out, set upright, and drawn in across the threshold of a perpetually welcoming mind . . . .
And then, when he began to talk about his work (“the only thing worthwhile,” he passionately repeated) — ah, then it seemed as if they were in the library of the Willows again, in the green summer twilight, while he read and she listened, taking in his meaning with every line of lids and lips, and the quietness of that head supported statuelike on her smooth bare arm. . . . It was curious, though, how some substitution of values of which she held the secret caused this spiritual communion to bring them nearer than the embraces he had hungered for at the Willows. Or perhaps his recoil from the idea of combining physical endearments with such a communion was due to Laura Lou’s persistent suspicion. He would have to dissociate sensual passion from all that had debased and cheapened it before it could blend with his vision of this woman who had understood and pitied him. . . . Next morning, when the questioning began, Vance told his wife that he had stopped in at the “Loafers’,” and stayed late talking about his book with a lot of fellows. “And that Stram woman, I suppose?” she suggested; and he retorted, plunging his angry face into the basin: “Oh, yes, and half the vaudeville stage of New York.” Laura Lou was brushing her hair before the looking glass. He caught the reflection of the small pale oval, the reddened lids, the ripe lips crumpled up with distress, and turning to her he passed his wet hand through her hair, tumbling it forward over her eyes. “You little goose, you . . .” She caught his hand and flung herself against him. “I don’t care a single scrap, darling, as long as you didn’t go and see Mrs. Tarrant,” she whispered, her lips on his. “Oh, hell,” he laughed, jerking away from her to finish his dressing . . . .
He had given Mrs. Tarrant a rough outline of Loot, and had been troubled, for a moment, by her hesitation, her reluctance to express an opinion. She thought the subject too big for him — was that it? No, not too big . . . she had confidence in his range . . . and she agreed with Frenside that he must above all not attempt another Instead. That had been a radiant accident; it would be disastrous to try to repeat it. When he murmured: “Pondicherry,” and spoke of the vision the word evoked, she shook her head, and said: “The publishers would jump at it; but take care!” No, Frenside was right; he must try his hand now at reality, the reality that lay about him. For the novelist, fantasy was a sterile bloom, after all. Only (she wondered) was he sufficiently familiar with the kind of life he was going to describe? Vance laughed and said that Frenside had put the same question. He ought to go out more, Frenside said, rub up against New York in its various phases, especially the social ones — oh, none of your damned documentation, that corpse-dissecting, as Frenside called it — Vance must just let himself live, go about among people, let the place and the people work themselves into his pores. . . . Excellent advice, but not so easy, when a fellow . . .
Here she interrupted him, leaning forward with her drawn-up scrutinizing gaze. “Vance, what is it? What’s wrong? Why do you persist in burying yourself instead of taking advantage of your success?”
“Well, I guess it’s because I’m not used to society, for one thing . . . .”
“Don’t think of it as ‘society,’ but just as a few friendly people who admire your work and want to know you. . . . Come here and see them,” she urged; and when he confessed that he had no evening clothes she laughed, and asked if he supposed she meant to invite him to formal entertainments, and if he didn’t know that Frenside never could be coaxed out on tailcoat occasions? Later, she added, when Vance had got more used to it all, he must go to some of the big shows too — the opera, musical parties, millionaire dinners, the whole stupid round — just to see how “the other half lived”; but meanwhile all she suggested was that he should not cut himself off from the small group of the cultivated and intelligent, who might stimulate him and enlarge his point of view — not, at least, she added, if he meant to go on writing novels . . . .
Of course he agreed with her; of course he said he would come on whatever evening she named. The mere sound of her voice made the creative ardour beat in him, and when she asked him if he couldn’t soon bring her his first chapter he answered joyfully that she should have it before the end of the week . . . .
After breakfast he hurried off to Lambart & Co., the publishers whose letter he had received the previous day. In the inner office where the great Mr. Lambart himself awaited him he heard fresh praises of Instead, and the hope that he was already starting “on another just like it; it’s what your public wants of you, Mr. Weston”; and finally the crucial question: “Will you leave it to us to see if we can come to an understanding with Dreck and Saltzer? Between ourselves (and quite confidentially, of course) their financial situation isn’t sound enough to let them give their authors a chance. They can’t advertise properly, they can’t — ” Oh, yes, Vance interrupted; he knew all that. The trouble was that his contract with them was tied up with his New Hour contract . . . and he didn’t see . . .
The publisher smiled the faint secret smile of initiation. That was just it: the New Hour wasn’t in any too healthy a state either. There too there might be something to be done: negotiations . . . If Mr. Weston would simply authorize him to act . . .
Vance hardly heard the suggestion. The statement with regard to the New Hour, coming to him with a shock of surprise, suddenly recalled the look on Mrs. Tarrant’s face when, the night before, he had blurted out that he was imprisoned by his contract with her husband. She had not answered; had not spoken at all: but her eager eyes and lips seemed drawn back, immobilized, and for the only time in their talk he felt between them an impenetrable barrier. . . . It was that, then! She knew the review was in a bad way, but pride, or perhaps loyalty to her husband, forbade her to admit it. She had merely said, after a moment: “The two years that are left will soon be over; then you’ll be free . . .” with a smile which seemed half ironic and half sympathizing. And they had passed on to other matters.
Yes, Vance said, rousing himself to answer Mr. Lambart, yes, of course he would authorize any attempt to buy him off . . . only, he added, Tarrant was a queer-tempered fellow . . . you never knew . . . The publisher’s smile flicked Tarrant away like a straw. “Gifted amateur . . . They can’t edit reviews . . .” He promised to let Vance know the result as soon as possible. “And now about the next novel,” he said, a ring of possessorship in his voice. The terms proposed (a third in advance, if Mr. Weston chose) made Vance’s blood drum in his ears; but there was a change of tone when he began to outline Loot. A big novel of modern New York? What — ANOTHER? Tempting subject, yes — tremendous canvas — but there’d been so many of them! The public was fed up with skyscrapers and niggers and bootleggers and actresses. Fed up equally with Harlem and with the op............