第46章 IX(3)

Rut everything she got for herself was inexpensive. and she made dresses for herself, and trimmed all her hats. With the hats Norman found no fault. There her good taste produced about as satisfactory results as could have been got at the fashionable milliners--more satisfactory than are got by the women who go there, with no taste of their own beyond a hazy idea that they want "something like what Mrs. So-and-So is wearing."

But homemade dresses were a different matter.

Norman longed to have her in toilettes that would bring out the full beauty of her marvelous figure. He, after the manner of the more intelligent and worldly-wise New York men, had some knowledge of women's clothes. His sister knew how to dress; Josephine knew how, though her taste was somewhat too sober to suit Norman--at least to suit him in Dorothy. He thought out and suggested dresses to Dorothy, and told her where to get them. Dorothy tried to carry out at home such of his suggestions as pleased her--for, like all women, she believed she knew how to dress herself. Her handiwork was creditable. It would have contented a less exacting and less trained taste than Norman's. It would have contented him had he not been infatuated with her beauty of face and form. As it was, the improvement in her appearance only served to intensify his agitation. He now saw in her not only all that had first conquered him, but also those unsuspected beauties and graces--and possibilities of beauty and grace yet more entrancing, were she but dressed properly.

"You don't begin to appreciate how beautiful you are," said he. It had ever been one of his rules in dealing with women to feed their physical vanity sparingly and cautiously, lest it should blaze up into one of those consuming flames that produce a very frenzy of conceit. But this rule, like all the others, had gone by the board. He could not conceal his infatuation from her, not even when he saw that it was turning her head and making his task harder and harder. "If you would only go over to New York to several dressmakers whose names I'll give you, I know you'd get clothes from them that you could touch up into something uncommon."

"I can't afford it," said she. "What I have is good enough--and costs more than I've the right to pay."

And her tone silenced him; it was the tone of finality, and he had discovered that she had a will.

Never before had Frederick Norman let any important thing drift. And when he started in with Dorothy he had no idea of changing that fixed policy. He would have scoffed if anyone had foretold to him that he would permit the days and the weeks to go by with nothing definite accomplished toward any definite purpose. Yet that was what occurred. Every time he came he had in mind a fixed resolve to make distinct progress with the girl. Every time he left he had a furious quarrel with himself for his weakness. "She is making a fool of me," he said to himself. "She MUST be laughing at me." But he returned only to repeat his folly, to add one more to the lengthening, mocking series of lost opportunities.

The truth lay deeper than he saw. He recognized only his own weakness of the infatuated lover's fatuous timidity. He did not realize how potent her charm for him was, how completely content she made him when he was with her, just from the fact that they were together. After a time an unsatisfied passion often thus diffuses itself, ceases to be a narrow torrent, becomes a broad river whose resistless force is hidden beneath an appearance of sparkling calm. Her ingenuousness amused him; her developing taste and imagination interested him; her freshness, her freedom from any sense of his importance in the world fascinated him, and there was a keener pleasure than he dreamed in the novel sensation of breathing the perfume of what he, the one time cynic, would have staked his life on being unsullied purity. Their relations were to him a delightful variation upon the intimacy of master and pupil. Either he was listening to her or was answering her questions --and the time flew. And there never was a moment when he could have introduced the subject that most concerned him when he was not with her. To have introduced it would have been rudely to break the charm of a happy afternoon or evening.

Was she leading him on and on nowhere deliberately?

Or was it the sweet and innocent simplicity it seemed?

He could not tell. He would have broken the charm and put the matter to the test had he not been afraid of the consequences. What had he to fear? Was she not in his power? Was she not his, whenever he should stretch forth his hand and claim her? Yes--no doubt --not the slightest doubt. But-- He was afraid to break the charm; it was such a satisfying charm.

Then--there was her father.

Men who arrive anywhere in any direction always have the habit of ignoring the nonessential more or less strongly developed. One reason--perhaps the chief reason--why Norman had got up to the high places of material success at so early an age was that he had an unerring instinct for the essential and wasted no time or energy upon the nonessential. In his present situation Dorothy's father, the abstracted man of science, was one of the factors that obviously fell into the nonessential class. Norman knew little about him, and cared less. Also, he took care to avoid knowing him. Knowing the father would open up possibilities of discomfort-- But, being a wise young man, Norman gave this matter the least possible thought.

Still, it was necessary that the two men see something of each other. Hallowell discovered nothing about Norman, not enough about his personal appearance to have recognized him in the street far enough away from the laboratory to dissociate the two ideas.