Part 26 (1/2)

He frowned and bit his lip--and felt uncomfortable, though he protested to himself that he was simply irritated at her slyness. Yes, it must be slyness.

”So,” she went on, ”there's no _reason_ for being on guard. Still, I feel that way.” She looked at him with sweet gravity. ”Perhaps I shouldn't if you didn't talk about love to me and kiss me in a way I feel you've no right to.”

Again he laid his hands upon her shoulders. This time he gazed angrily into her eyes. ”Are you a fool? Or are you making a fool of me?” he said. ”I can't decide which.”

”I certainly am very foolish,” was her apologetic answer. ”I don't know a lot of things, like you and father. I'm only a girl.”

And he had the maddening sense of being baffled again--of having got nowhere, of having demonstrated afresh to himself and to her his own weakness where she was concerned. What unbelievable weakness! Had there ever been such another case? Yes, there must have been. How little he had known of the possibilities of the relations of men and women--he who had prided himself on knowing all!

She said, ”You are going to marry?”

”I suppose so,” replied he sourly.

”Are you worried about the expense? Is it costing you too much, this helping father? Are you sorry you went into it?”

He was silent.

”You are sorry?” she exclaimed. ”You feel that you are wasting your money?”

His generosity forbade him to keep up the pretense that might aid him in his project. ”No,” he said hastily. ”No, indeed. This expense--it's nothing.” He flushed, hung his head in shame before his own weakness, as he added, in complete surrender, ”I'm very glad to be helping your father.”

”I knew you would be!” she cried triumphantly. ”I knew it!” And she flung her arms round his neck and kissed him.

”That's better!” he said with a foolishly delighted laugh. ”I believe we are beginning to get acquainted.”

”Yes, indeed. I feel quite different already.”

”I hoped so. You are coming to your senses?”

”Perhaps. Only--” She laid a beautiful white pleading hand upon his shoulder and gazed earnestly into his eyes--”please don't frighten me with that talk--and those other kisses.”

He looked at her uncertainly. ”Come round in your own way,” he said at last. ”I don't want to hurry you. I suppose every bird has its own way of dropping from a perch.”

”You don't like my way?” she inquired.

It was said archly but also in the way that always made him vaguely uneasy, made him feel like one facing a mystery which should be explored cautiously. ”It is graceful,” he admitted, with a smile since he could not venture to frown. ”Graceful--but slow.”

She laughed--and he could not but feel that the greater laughter in her too innocent eyes was directed at him. She talked of other things--and he let her--charmed, yet cursing his folly, his slavery, the while.

X

Many a time he had pitied a woman for letting him get away from her, when she obviously wished to hold him and failed solely because she did not understand her business. Like every other man, he no sooner began to be attracted by a woman than he began to invest her with a mystery and awe which she either could dissipate by forcing him to see the truth of her commonplaceness or could increase into a power that would enslave him by keeping him agitated and interested and ever satisfied yet ever baffled. But no woman had shown this supreme skill in the art of love--until Dorothy Hallowell. She exasperated him. She fascinated him.

She kept him so restless that his professional work was all but neglected. Was it her skill? Was it her folly? Was she simply leading him on and on, guided blindly by woman's instinct to get as much as she could and to give as little as she dared? Or was she protected by a real indifference to him--the strongest, indeed the only invulnerable armor a woman can wear? Was she protecting herself? Or was it merely that he, weakened by his infatuation, was doing the protecting for her?

Beside these distracting questions, the once all-important matter of professional and worldly ambition seemed not worth troubling about. They even so vexed him that he had become profoundly indifferent as to Josephine. He saw her rarely. When they were alone he either talked neutral subjects or sat almost mute, hardly conscious of her presence.

He received her efforts at the customary caressings with such stolidity that she soon ceased to annoy him. They reduced their outward show of affection to a kiss when they met, another when they separated. He was tired--always tired--worn out--half sick--hara.s.sed by business concerns. He did not trouble himself about whether his listless excuses would be accepted or not. He did not care what she thought--or might think--or might do.

Josephine was typical of the women of the comfortable cla.s.s. For them the fundamentally vital matters of life--the profoundly hara.s.sing questions of food, clothing, and shelter--are arranged and settled. What is there left to occupy their minds? Little but the idle emotions they manufacture and spread foglike over their true natures to hide the barrenness, the monotony. They fool with phrases about art or love or religion or charity--for none of those things can be vivid realities to those who are swathed and stupefied in a luxury they have not to take the least thought to provide for themselves. Like all those women, Josephine fancied herself complex--fancied she was a person of variety and of depth because she repeated with a slight change of wording the things she read in clever books or heard from clever men. There seemed to Norman to be small enough originality, personality, to the ordinary man of the comfortable cla.s.s; but there was some, because his necessity of struggling with and against his fellow men in the several arenas of active life compelled him to be at least a little of a person. In the women there seemed nothing at all--not even in Josephine. When he listened to her, when he thought of her, now--he was calmly critical. He judged her as a human specimen--judged much as would have old Newton Hallowell to whom the whole world was mere laboratory.