There was no denying his justified anger. No man likes to have his heart
secrets disclosed; and Shelby knew that even the Associated Press could
not give more publicity to the discovery than Minckle could. He
dreaded--and justly, I think--the wagging of heads that would be noticed
from now on, the pitiless interest in his amour.
Stanton was the only one of us, except myself, later, who ever was
privileged, if you care to put it that way, to visit Shelby's
apartment--diggings, Shelby always called them. There, on the walls, he
told us, were innumerable photographs of Miss Davis, in every
conceivable pose. They looked out at one from delicate and heavy frames;
and some were stuck informally in the mirror of his dresser, as though
casually placed there to lighten up the beginning of each day, or
perhaps because there was no other space for them.
"You must know her awfully well," Stanton ventured once.
"I have never met the lady," was all Shelby said; and Stanton told me
there was a sigh that followed the remark.
"What!" this full-blooded young American reporter cried, astounded.
"You've never met this girl, and yet you have all these--all these
pictures of her?"
"I don't want to lose my dream, my illusion," was Shelby's answer.
A man who would not meet the toast of Broadway--and Fifth Avenue, for
that matter--if he could, was, to Stanton and the rest of us,
inconceivable.
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