"You sha'n't go back," said Martin. He turned the car up Madison Avenue
and drove without another word to East Sixty-seventh Street and stopped
in front of a small house that was sandwiched between a mansion and a
twelve-story apartment-house. "This is mine," he said simply. "Will you
come in?"
A smile of huge relief came into Joan's eyes. "Why worry?" she said.
"How foolish of us not to have thought of this before!"
But there was no smile on Martin's face. His eyes were amazingly bright
and his mouth set firmly. His chin looked squarer than ever. Once more
he carried out the suit-case, put a latchkey into the lock and threw
back the door. Joan went in and stood looking about the cheery hall
with its old oak, and sporting prints, white wood and red carpet. "Oh,
but this is perfectly charming, Marty," she cried out. "Why did we
bother our heads about Alice when there is this haven of refuge?"
Martin marched up to her and stood eye to eye. "Because I'm alone," he
said, "and you're a girl. That's why."
Joan made a face. "I see. The conventions again. Isn't there any sort
of woman here?"
"Yes, the cook."
She laughed. There was a comic side to this tragedy, after all, it
seemed. "Well, perhaps she'll give us some scrambled eggs and coffee. I
could eat a horse."
Martin opened the door of the sitting room. Like the one in which she
had slept so soundly the previous night, it was stamped with the
character and personality of the other Martin Gray. Books, warm and
friendly, lined the walls. Mounted on wood, fish of different sizes and
breeds hung above the cases, and over the fireplace there was a
full-length oil painting of a man in a red coat and riding breeches.
His kind eyes greeted Joan.
For several minutes she stood beneath it, smiling back. Then she turned
and put her hand involuntarily on the boy's shoulder. "Oh, Marty!" she
said. "I AM sorry."
The boy gave one quick upward glance, and cleared his throat. "I told
you that this house is mine. It isn't. It's yours. It's the only way,
if you're to remain in the city. Is it good enough? Do you want to stay
as much as all that?"
The puzzled look came back. For a moment Joan was silent, worrying out
the meaning of Martin's abrupt and rather cryptic words. There seemed
to be a tremendous amount of fuss because she happened to be a girl.
Martin spoke again before she had emerged from the thicket of inward
questions. She was only eighteen, after all.
"I mean, you can marry me if you like." he said, "and then no one can
take you back." He was amazed at his courage and hideously afraid that
she would laugh at him. He had never dared to say how much he loved her.
She did laugh, but with a ring of so much pleasure and relief that the
blood flew to his head. "Why, Marty, what a brain! What organization!
Of course I'll marry you. Why ever didn't we think of that last night?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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