The Moon out of Reach Part 8

"For goodness' sake be more explicit, Penny! Surely she hasn't turned him down?"

"He hasn't given her the chance."

"You mean--you _can't_ mean that he's chucked her?"

"That's practically what it amounts to. And I don't understand it. Nan is so essentially attractive from a man's point of view."

"How do you know?" queried Kitty whimsically. "You're only a woman."

"Why, because I've used my eyes, my dear! . . . But in this case it seems we were all mistaken. If ever a man deliberately set himself to make a woman care, Maryon Rooke was the man. And when he'd succeeded--he went away."

Kitty produced a small gold cigarette case from the depths of an elaborate bead bag and extracted a cigarette. She lit it and began smoking reflectively.

"And I suppose all this, coming on top of the staleness of things in general after the war, has flattened her out?"

"It's given her a bad knock."

"Did she tell you anything about it?"

"A little. He came here to say good-bye to her before going to France--"

"I know," interpolated Kitty. "He's going there to paint Princess Somebody-or-other while she's staying in Paris."

"Well, I came in when he'd left and found Nan sitting like a stone statue, gazing blankly in front of her. She wouldn't say much, but bit by bit I dragged it out of her. Since then she has never referred to the matter again. She is quite gay at times in a sort of artificial way, but she doesn't do any work, though she spends odd moments fooling about at the piano. She goes out morning, noon, and night, and comes back dead-beat, apparently not having enjoyed herself at all. Can you imagine Nan like that?"

"Not very easily."

"I believe he's taken the savour out of things for her," said Penelope, adding slowly, in a voice that was quite unlike her usual practical tones: "Brushed the bloom off the world for her."

"Poor old Nan! She must be hard hit. . . . She's never been hurt badly before."

"Never--before she met that man. I can't forgive him, Kitty. I'm horribly afraid what sort of effect this miserable affair is going to have on a girl of Nan's queer temperament."

Kitty turned the matter over in her mind in silence. Then with a small, sage nod of her red head, she advanced a suggestion.

"Bring her over to dinner to-morrow--no, not to-morrow, I'm booked. Say Thursday, and I'll have a nice man to meet her. She needs someone to play around with. There's nothing like another man to knock the first one out of a woman's head. It's cure by homeopathy."

Penelope smiled dubiously.

"It's a bit of bad luck on the second man, isn't it--if he's nice? You know, Nan is rather fatal to the peace of the male mind."

"Oh, the man I'm thinking of has himself well in hand. He's a novelist--and finds safety in numbers. His mother was French."

"And Nan's great-grandmother. Kitty, is it wise?"

"Extreme measures are sometimes necessary. He and she will hit it off together at once, I know."

As Kitty finished speaking there came a trill at the front-door bell, followed a minute later by a masculine knock on the door.

"Come in," cried Penelope.

The door opened to admit a tall, fair man who somehow reminded one of a big, genial Newfoundland.

"I've called for my wife," he said, shaking hands with. Penelope, and smiling down at her with a pair of lazily humorous blue eyes. "Can I have her?"

"In a minute, Barry"--Kitty nodded at him cheerfully. "We're just settling plans about Nan."

"Nan? I should have imagined that young woman was very capable of making her own plans," returned Barry Seymour, letting his long length down into a chair. "In fact, I was under the impression she'd already made 'em,"

he added with a grin.

"No, they're unsettled at present," returned Kitty. "She's not very keen about Maryon Rooke now." Kitty was of the opinion that you should never tell even the best of husbands more than he need know. "So we think she requires distraction," she pursued firmly.

"And who's the poor devil you've fixed on as a burnt-offering?" enquired Seymour, tugging reflectively at his big, fair moustache.

"It certainly is a man," conceded Kitty.

"Naturally," agreed her husband amicably.

"But I'm not going to tell you who it is or I know you'd let the cat out of the bag, and then Nan will be put off at the beginning.

Men"--superbly--"never can keep a secret."

"But they can use their native observation, my dear," retorted Barry calmly. "And I bet you five to one in gloves that I tell you the name of the man inside a week."

"In a week it won't matter," p.r.o.nounced Kitty oracularly. "Give me a week--and you can have all the time that's left."

"Well, we'd better occupy what's left of this afternoon in getting back home, old thing," returned her husband. "Or you'll never be dressed in time for the Granleys' dinner to-night."

Kitty looked at the clock and jumped up quickly.

"Good heavens! I'd forgotten all about them! Penelope, I must fly!

Thursday, then--don't forget. Dinner at eight."

She caught up her furs. There was a faint rustle of feminine garments, a fleeting whiff of violets in the air, and Kitty had taken her departure, followed by her husband.

A short time afterwards a taxi pulled up at Edenhall Mansions and Nan stepped out of it. Penelope sprang up to welcome her as she entered the sitting-room. She was darning stockings, foolish, pretty, silken things--Nan's, be it said.

"Well, how did it go?" she asked eagerly.

"The concert? Oh, quite well. I had a very good reception, and this morning's notices in the newspapers were positively calculated to make me blush."

There was an odd note of indifference in her voice; the concert did not appear to interest her much. Penelope pursued her interrogation.

"Did you enjoy yourself?"

A curious look of reminiscence came into Nan's eyes.

"Oh, yes. I enjoyed myself. Very much."