Part 41 (1/2)

”Thank you,” said he, still in the same abstraction. He shook hands with her, moved hesitatingly toward the door. With his hand on the k.n.o.b he turned and glanced keenly at her. He surprised in her face a look of mystery--of seriousness, of sadness--was there anxiety in it, also? And then he saw a certain elusive reminder of her father--and it brought to him with curious force the memory of how she had been brought up, of what must be hers by inheritance and by training--she, the daughter of a great and simple and n.o.ble man----

”You'll come again?” she said, and there was the note in her voice that made his nerves grow tense and vibrate.

But he seemed not to have heard her question. Still at the unopened door, he folded his arms upon his chest and said, speaking rapidly yet with the deliberation of one who has thought out his words in advance:

”I don't know what kind of girl you are. I never have known. I've never wanted to know. If you told me you were--what is called good, I'd doubt it. If you told me you weren't, I'd want to kill you and myself. They say there's a fatal woman for every man and a fatal man for every woman.

I always laughed at the idea--until you. I don't know what to make of myself.”

She suddenly laid her finger on her lips. It irritated him, to discover that, as he talked, speaking the things that came from the very depths of his soul, she had been giving him only part of her attention, had been listening for a step on the stairs. He was hearing the ascending step now. He frowned. ”Can't you send him away?” he asked.

”I must,” said she in a low tone. ”It wouldn't do for him to know you were here. He has strict ideas--and is terribly jealous.”

A few seconds of silence, then a knock on the other side of the door.

”Who's there?” she called.

”I'm a little early,” came in an agreeable, young man's voice. ”Aren't you ready?”

”Not nearly,” replied she, in a laughing, innocent voice. ”You'll have to go away for half an hour.”

”I'll wait out here on the steps.”

Her eyes were sparkling. A delicate color had mounted to her skin.

Norman, watching her jealously, clinched his strong jaws. She said: ”No--you must go clear away. I don't want to feel that I'm being hurried. Don't come back until a quarter past four.”

”All right. I'm crazy to see you.” This in the voice of a lover. She smiled radiantly at Norman, as if she thought he would share in her happiness at these evidences of her being well loved. The unseen young man said: ”Exactly a quarter past. What time does your clock say it is now?”

”A quarter to,” replied she.

”That's what my watch says. So there'll be no mistake. For half an hour--good-by!”

”Half an hour!” she called.

She and Norman stood in silence until the footsteps died away. Then she said crossly to Norman: ”You ought to have gone before. I don't like to do these things.”

”You do them well,” said he, with a savage gleam.

She was prompt and sure with his punishment. She said, simply and sweetly: ”I'd do anything to keep _his_ good opinion of me.”

Norman felt and looked cowed. ”You don't know how it makes me suffer to see you fond of another man,” he cried.

She seemed not in the least interested, went to the mirror of the bureau and began to inspect her hair with a view to doing it up. ”You can go in five minutes,” said she. ”By that time he'll be well out of the way.

Anyhow, if he saw you leaving the house he'd not know but what you had been to see some one else. He knows you by reputation but not by sight.”

Norman went to her, took her by the shoulders gently but strongly. ”Look at me,” he said.

She looked at him with an expression, or perhaps absence of expression, that was simple listening.