第38章 VII(4)

Some one--probably a Frenchman--has said that there are always in a man's life three women--the one on the way out, the one that is, and the one that is to be. Norman--ever the industrious trafficker with the feminine that the man of the intense vitality necessary to a great career of action is apt to be--was by no means new to the situation in which he now found himself. But never before had the circumstances been so difficult. Josephine in no way resembled any woman with whom he had been involved; she was the first he had taken seriously. Nor did the other woman resemble the central figure in any of his affairs. He did not know what she was like, how to classify her; but he did know that she was unlike any woman he had ever known and that his feeling for her was different--appallingly different--from any emotion any other woman had inspired in him. So--a walk alone with Josephine--a first talk with her after his secret treachery--was no light matter. "Deeper and deeper," he said to himself. "Where is this going to end?"

She began by sympathizing with him for having so much to do--"and father says you can get through more work than any man he ever knew, not excluding himself." She was full of tenderness and compliment, of a kind of love that made him feel as the dirt beneath his feet. She respected him so highly; she believed in him so entirely. The thought of her discovering the truth, or any part of it, gave him a sensation of nausea.

He was watching her out of the corner of his eye. Never had he seen her more statelily beautiful. If he should lose her!" I'm mad--MAD!" he said to himself.

"Josephine is as high above her as heaven above earth.

What is there to her, anyhow? Not brains--nor taste --nor such miraculous beauty. Why do I make an ass of myself about her? I ought to go to my doctor."

"I don't believe you're listening to what I'm saying," laughed Josephine.

"My head's in a terrible state," replied he. "I can't think of anything."

"Don't try to talk or to listen, dearest," said she in the sweet and soothing tone that is neither sweet nor soothing to a man in a certain species of unresponsive mood. "This air will do you good. It doesn't annoy you for me to talk to you, does it?"

The question was one of those which confidently expects, even demands, a sincere and strenuous negative for answer. It fretted him, this matter-of-course assumption of hers that she could not but be altogether pleasing, not to say enchanting to him. Her position, her wealth, the attentions she had received, the flatteries-- In her circumstances could it be in human nature not to think extremely well of oneself? And he admitted that she had the right so to think. Still--For the first time she scraped upon his nerves. His reply, "Annoy me? The contrary," was distinctly crisp. To an experienced ear there would have sounded the faint warning under-note of sullenness.

But she, believing in his love and in herself, saw nothing, suspected nothing. "We know each other so thoroughly," she went on, "that we don't need to make any effort. How congenial we are! I always understand you. I feel such a sense of the perfect freedom and perfect frankness between us. Don't you?"

"You have wonderful intuitions," said he.

It was the time to alarm him by coldness, by capr-ciousness. But how could she know it? And she was in love--really in love--not with herself, not with love, but with him. Thus, she made the mistake of all true lovers in those difficult moments. She let him see how absolutely she was his. Nor did the spectacle of her sincerity, of her belief in his sincerity put him in any better humor with himself.

The walk was a mere matter of a dozen blocks. He thought it would never end. "You are sure you aren't ill?" she said, when they were at her door--a superb bronze door it was, opening into a house of the splendor that for the acclimated New Yorker quite conceals and more than compensates absence of individual taste.

"You don't look ill. But you act queerly."

"I'm often this way when they drive me too hard down town."

She looked at him with fond admiration; he might have been better pleased had there not been in the look a suggestion of the possessive. "How they do need you! Father says-- But I mustn't make you any vainer than you are."