第81章 XVI(5)

She made no reply, but went to the window, and from the height looked down and out upon the mighty spread of the city. He observed her a moment with a dazed pitying expression, took his hat and departed.

It was nearly two hours before he got together suffi-cient courage to return. He had been hoping--had been saying to himself with vigorous effort at confidence --that he had simply seen one more of the many transformations, each of which seemed to present her as a wholly different personality. When he should see her again, she would have wiped out the personality that had shocked and saddened him, would appear as some new variety of enchantress, perhaps even more potent over his senses than ever before. But a glance as he entered demolished that hope. She was no different than when he left. Evidently she had been crying, and spasms of that sort always accentuate every unloveliness.

He did not try to nerve himself to kiss her, but said:

"It'll not take you long to get ready?"

She moved to rise from her languid rest upon the sofa. She sank back. "Perhaps we'd better not go to-day," suggested she.

"Don't you feel well?" he asked, and his tone was more sympathetic than it would have been had his sympathy been genuine.

"Not very," replied she, with a faint deprecating smile. "And not very--not very----"

"Not very what?" he said, in a tone of encouragement.

"Not very happy," she confessed. "I'm afraid I've made a--a dreadful mistake."

He looked at her in silence. She could have said nothing that would have caused a livelier response within himself. His cynicism noted the fact that while he had mercifully concealed his discontent, she was thinking only of herself. But he did not blame her. It was only the familiar habit of the sex, bred of man's assiduous cultivation of its egotism. He said: "Oh, you'll feel differently about it later. Let's get some fresh air and see what the shops have to offer."

A pause, then she, timidly: "Would you mind very much if I--if I didn't--go on?"

"You mean, if you left me?"

She nodded without looking at him. He could not understand himself, but as he sat observing her, so young, so inexperienced and so undesirable, a pity of which he would not have dreamed his nature capable welled up in him, choking his throat with sobs he could scarcely restrain and filling his eyes with tears he had secretly to wipe away. And he felt himself seized of a sense of responsibility for her as strong in its solemn, still way as any of the paroxysms of his passion had been.

He said: "My dear--you mustn't decide anything so important to you in a hurry."

A tremor passed over her, and he thought she was going to dissolve in hysterics. But she exhibited once more that marvelous and mysterious self-control, whose secret had interested and baffled him. She said in her dim, quiet way:

"It seems to me I just can't stay on."

"You can always go, you know. Why not try it a few days?"

He could feel the trend of her thoughts, and in the way things often amuse us without in the least moving us to wish to laugh, he was amused by noting that she was trying to bring herself to stay on, out of consideration for HIS feelings! He said with a kind of paternal tenderness:

"Whenever you want to go, I am willing to arrange things for you--so that you needn't worry about money.

But I feel that, as I am older than you, I ought to do all I can to keep you from making a mistake you might soon regret."

She studied him dubiously. He saw that she--naturally enough--did not believe in his disinterestedness, that she hadn't a suspicion of his change, or, rather collapse, of feeling. She said:

"If you ask it, I'll stay a while. But you must promise to--to be kind to me."

There was only gentleness in his smile. But what a depth of satirical self-mockery and amusement at her innocent young egotism it concealed! "You'll never have reason to speak of that again, my dear," said he.

"I--can--trust you?" she said.

"Absolutely," replied he. "I'll have another room opened into this suite. Would you like that?"

"If you--if you don't mind."

He stood up with sudden boyish buoyance. "Now --let's go shopping. Let's amuse ourselves."

She rose with alacrity. She eyed him uncertainly, then flung her arms round his neck and kissed him.

"You are SO good to me!" she cried. "And I'm not a bit nice."

He did not try to detain her, but sent her to finish dressing, with an encouraging pat on the shoulder and a cheerful, "Don't worry about yourself--or me."