Part 24 (1/2)

Howard was silent.

”And,” the Visitor went on relentlessly, ”let me remind you that not only did you give her up without a struggle a few months ago but also she gave you up without a word.”

”But what could she have said?”

”I don't know, I'm sure. I'm not familiar with ways feminine. But I know--we know--that, if there had not been some reservation in her love, some hesitation about you--unconscious, perhaps, but powerful enough to make her yield--she would not have let you go as she did.”

”But she did not realise, as I did not, how much our love meant to us.”

”Perhaps--that sounds well. All I ask is, will she help you? Are you really so much stronger than you were only four months ago? Or are you stimulated by success? Suppose that days of disaster, of peril, come?

What then?”

”But they will not. I have won a position. I can always command a large salary--perhaps not quite so much but still a large salary.”

”Perhaps--if you don't trouble yourself about principles. But how would it be if you would do nothing, write nothing, except what you think is honest? Would you ask her to face it? Tell me, tell yourself honestly, have you the right to a.s.sume a responsibility you may not be able to bear, to invite temptations you may not be able to resist?”

There was a long silence. At last Howard stood up and flung his cigar into the sea. His face was drawn and his eyes burned.

”G.o.d in heaven!” he cried, ”am I not human? May I not have companions.h.i.+p and sympathy and love? Must I be alone and friendless and loveless always? That is not life; that is not just. I will not; I will not. I love her--love her--love her. With the best that there is in me, I love her. Am I such a coward that I cannot face even my own weaknesses?”

XVIII.

HOWARD EXPLAINS HIS MACHINE.

In August Marian and Mrs. Carnarvon came to the Waldorf for two days.

Howard had offered to show them how a newspaper is made; and Mrs.

Carnarvon, finding herself bored by too many days of the same few people every day, herself proposed the trip. The three dined in the open air on Sherry's piazza and at eleven o'clock drove down the Avenue, to the east at Was.h.i.+ngton Square, and through the Bowery.

”I never saw it before,” said Marian, ”and I must say I shall not care if I never see it again. Why do people make so much fuss about slums, I wonder?”

”Oh, they're so queer, so like another world,” suggested Mrs. Carnarvon.

”It gives you such a delightful sensation of sadness. It's just like a not-too-melancholy play, only better because it's real. Then, too, it makes one feel so much more comfortable and clean and contented in one's own surroundings.”

”You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Jessie.” Marian spoke in mock indignation. ”The next thing we know you'll sink to being a patron of the poor and go about enjoying yourself at making them self-conscious and envious.”

”They're not at all sad down this way,” said Howard, ”except in the usual inescapable human ways. When they're not hit too hard, they bear up wonderfully. You see, living on the verge of ruin and tumbling over every few weeks get one used to it. It ceases to give the sensation of event.”

Their automobile had turned into Park Row and so reached the _News-Record_ building in Printing House Square. Howard took the two women to the elevator and they shot upward in a car crowded with telegraph messengers, each carrying one or more envelopes, some of them bearing in bold black type the words: ”News!--Rus.h.!.+”

”I suppose that is the news for the paper?” Mrs. Carnarvon asked.

”A little of it. Our special cable and special news from towns to which we have no direct wire and also the _a.s.sociated Press_ reports come this way. But we don't use much _a.s.sociated Press_ matter, as it is the same for all the papers.”

”What do you do with it?”

”Throw it away. A New York newspaper throws away every night enough to fill two papers and often enough to fill five or six.”