ist!"

Kitty looked down. "That is not my blood, Johnny. It is yours."

"Mine?" Johnny. Something in the way she said it. "Mine?"--trying to
solve the riddle.

"Yes. It is where your cheek rested when--I thought you were dead."

The sense of misery, of oppression, of terror, all fell away
miraculously, leaving only the flower of glory. She would be his
plaything if he wanted her.

Silence.

"Kitty, I came out of a dark world--to find you. I loved you the moment
I entered your kitchen that night. But I did not know it. I loved you
the night you brought the wallet. Still I did not understand. It
was when I heard the lift door and knew you had gone forever that I
understood. Loved you with all my heart, with all that poor old Stefani
had fashioned out of muck and clay. If you held my head to your heart,
if that is my blood there--Do you, can you care a little?"

"I can and do care very much, Johnny."

Her voice to his ears was like the G string of the Amati. "Will you go
with me?"

"Anywhere. But you are a prince of some great Russian house, Johnny, and
I am nobody."

"What am I, Kitty? Less than nobody--a homeless outcast, with only you
and Cutty. An American! Well, when I'm that it will be different; I'll
be somebody. God forgive me if I do not give it absolute loyalty, this
new country!... Never call me anything but Johnny."

"Johnny." Anywhere, whatever he willed her to be.

"I'm a child, Kitty. I want to grow up--if I can--to be an American,
something like that ripping old thoroughbred yonder."

Cutty! Johnny wanted to be something like Cutty. Johnny would have to
grow up to be his own true self; for nobody could ever be like Cutty. He
was as high and far away from the average man as this apartment was from
hers. Would he understand her attitude? Could she say anything until it
would be too late for him to interfere? She was this man's woman. She
would have her span of happiness, come ill, come good, even if it
hurt Cutty, whom she loved in another fashion. But for Johnny dropping
through that trap she might never have really known, married Cutty, and
been happy. Happy until one or the other died; never gloriously, never
furiously, but mildly happy; perhaps understanding each other far better
than Johnny and she would understand each other. The average woman's
lot. But to give her heart, her mind, her body in a whirlwind of
emotions, absolute surrender, to know for once the highest state of
exaltation