"I don't know what I mean!" he cried helplessly. "The fact is that she is rich and she is Dorothy."
"She might get over being rich," mused Mary, "but I doubt if she can get over being Dorothy."
"And I can't get over it either," he sighed as he took the last cheese sandwich.
Chapter XXIV
Two weeks later, unexpectedly, Ivan Alter arrived at the Fifth Avenue house. He was awaiting Mary in the library when she came downstairs after her afternoon nap.
She looked at him in astonishment. "Am I still asleep?" she gasped. "Am I having nightmares?"
"I knew you'd be glad to see me," he said dryly.
"I'm delighted," she admitted, "and amazed."
"I had to come to New York to paint a dowager," he explained. "Eve rented a furnished studio on Fifty-seventh Street, merely to use until I finish the portrait. I've got to work fast because the old girl looks as though she is falling apart and it is hard to paint fragments. I've got a taxi waiting downstairs. Suppose we go over to the Plaza for afternoon tea. I've so much I'd like to talk about and it's best for us to be somewhere where there is no danger of being overheard."
"Well," Mary meditated, "I don't know. I'm not very keen on taxis. I should use a Mack truck. A young chap named Jimmy Whale who probably will be a member of the family in eighty or ninety years, has an Austin and is continually asking me to go for a ride. I can't make up my mind which part of me would be best for him to take. To take me out completely he'd have to invite me every day for a week. Oh, well, I'll go to the Plaza with you, Ivan, but I want something more substantial than afternoon tea. At least treat me to a club sandwich. I wish Dorothy were home so that you could meet her. However, you can meet her at dinner. Of course you are coming
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