Strange. There must be some reason. She would tell him when they met. Should he call her up? Or go to her house and camp till she came back? He shook his head. His pride warned him that that wouldn’t be policy. The next sign must come from her. And then he wondered, was it right to have either pride or policy when you were in love? It was pride and policy that had made him waste his chances on that night drive from Glastonbury. He went to see his publisher, who was astonished by his youth and had had no idea that he was in America. He found himself treated as a personality--a man to be reckoned with. It was exhilarating, flattering; but all that it meant to him was something to tell Desire to make her glad. That was all that any success meant now. It was five o’clock when he returned to his hotel. He went to the desk. “Any message?” The clerk glanced down the row of pigeon-holes and drew out a slip of paper. “A lady called you up.” With nervous fingers he took it from him and read: “Come to dinner seven forty-five. Vashti Jodrell.” From Desire nothing! CHAPTER VI--DESIRE’S MOTHER The address which Desire had given him was on Riverside Drive. Shortly after seven he left the Brevoort and climbed to the roof of a passing bus. The polished asphalt of Fifth Avenue gleamed like a waterway. Round and unwinking, like tethered moons, arc-lights shone in endless lines. As he passed through Madison Square, he had a glimpse of carnival--trolleys streaming like comets, and Broadway seething in a blaze of light. Then, as though velvet curtains had fallen, again the quiet. With the secret magic and passivity of night, the city had undergone a change. It had lost its haste. It went on tiptoe now. Tall buildings stood silent as tombs, quarried from the granite of the dusk. Streets had become orientalized. A spirit of poetry was abroad. Over the turrets of this Babylon of a day the wings of Time brooded, shadowing its modern glare with the pomp of a sombre and mysterious austerity. It had become a metropolis of dreamers, as fitting a stage as Florence for any tale that love might choose to tell.