rain from the other. For it was plain enough that part of her brain
refused to cooperate with the other. A break in the trend of thought:
she might succeed in getting hold of the puzzle if she could drop it
absolutely for a little while and then pick it up again.

She had not gone home. She had not notified Bernini. She had checked her
luggage in the station parcel room and come directly here. For what? To
let the sense of luxury overcome the hidden repugnance of the idea of
marrying Cutty, divorcing him, and living on his money. To put herself
in the way of visible temptation. What fretted her so, what was wearing
her down to the point of fatigue, was the patent imbecility of her
reluctance. There would have been some sense of it if Cutty had proposed
a real marriage. All she had to do was mumble a few words, sign her name
to a document, live out West for a few months, and be in comfortable
circumstances all the rest of her life. And she doddered!

She would run the streets with Johnny Two-Hawks, return, and dine with
him. Who cared? Proper or improper, whose business was it but Kitty
Conover's? Danger? That was the peculiar attraction. She wanted to rush
into danger, some tense excitement the strain of which would lift her
out of her mood. A recurrent touch of the wild impulsiveness of her
childhood. Hadn't she sometimes flown out into thunderstorms, after
merited punishment, to punish the mother whom thunder terrorized? And
now she was going to rush into unknown danger to punish Fate--like a
silly child! Nevertheless, she would go into the streets with Johnny
Two-Hawks.

"But are you strong enough to venture on the streets?"

"Rot! Dash it all, I'm no mollycoddle! All nonsense to keep me pinned in
like this. Will you go with me--be my guide?"

"Yes!" She shot out the word and crossed the Rubicon before reason
could begin to lecture. Besides, wasn't reason treating her shabbily in
withholding the key to the riddle? "Johnny Two-Hawks, I will go as far
as Harlem if you want me to."

"Johnny Two-Hawks!" He laughed joyously, then kissed her hands. But he
had to pay for this bending--a stab that filled his eyes with flying
sparks. He must remember, once out of doors, not to stoop quickly. "I
say, you're the jolliest girl I ever met! Just the two of us, what?"

"The way you speak English is wonderful!"

"Simple enough to explain. Had an English nurse from the beginning.
Spoke English and Italian before I spoke Russi