Part 51 (2/2)

Heard through the door, the scene that ensued between these two curious lovers, when they had worked their way through preliminaries and come to the point at which they had parted after the day at Vallombrosa, must particularly have seemed lacking in purple and poetry; for then the soft light in Aurora's eyes would not have been seen, nor the deep flash in Gerald's, as he by a point scored felt himself nearer to the goal.

”Now, what made you run off like that, I want to know,” Aurora asked in the flowing American which she reserved for real friends and sincere moments, ”after you'd said when you left me at the door, 'Good-by till to-morrow'?”

”My reasons were several, all simple,” he replied, with a faun-look up from the corner of his eye, which watched her expression. ”First, I wished to flee from that newspaper article--dreadful!--till the danger of any reference to it in my hearing was greatly reduced. Then, aside from a slight natural need to recover myself, I felt I must for manners'

sake allow a little time to pa.s.s before I approached you again on the subject of marrying me. One scruples to make himself a bore. It therefore would be better not to see you, and, in order not to see you, better not to be in town. Lastly, Auroretta, I conceived the infernal ambition to make you suffer from absence the minutest fraction of what I should suffer myself.”

”Don't say a word! I've missed you so my bones felt hollowed out!”

”Reflect then, my dearest, upon the sufferings you are preparing for yourself if you haven't a kinder answer for me than the other day to the same question. All the reasons you gave for saying no were such bad ones, founded upon a bad opinion of me. I can't take your refusal for final, don't you see, without first being sure I have convinced you at least that you are wrong in thinking me a fish or a mudturtle, and wrong in attributing a lack of intelligence to me which could betray me into confusing great things with little, little with great.”

”Oh, Gerald, you oughtn't to keep on trying! I do wish you wouldn't! No!

Don't say any more about it!” she pleaded in weak anguish. ”You oughtn't to go on battering against the little bit of common sense I've got left.”

”Common sense! I advise you to speak of it!” he affected to jeer, remarkably braced by her misery. ”Common sense, as represented by a decent concern for your good name, ought to prompt you enter as quickly as you can into an engagement with me. I met our dear Doctor Batoni in the street yesterday on my way home from the station, and he amiably asked how was my _fidanzata_, or betrothed? It was a difficult moment for me, because he told me that _you_ had told him you were that.”

”I told him nothing of the sort! I said I was your friend, in French.”

”A friend, in French, may mean a good deal. Save your reputation, dear; I give you the chance.”

”What nonsense! I explained to him as well as I could, in French, that I was there taking care of you because I was your friend.”

”You are hopelessly compromised. Look to me to set you right.”

”Gerald, I shall do nothing of the kind.”

”Ah, I see that your prejudices hold firm. I was afraid of it when I came.” His mask of flippancy slipped for a moment; deep feeling made his voice uncertain. ”I am not that hardy and masterful man, Aurora, who could break them down and clutch you above their ruin. But you will find me very faithful to a hope--which, in fact, to relinquish now would be beyond what I can expect of my courage.” He resumed bluffness. ”I told Vincent he might look for my return to-morrow.”

”No, sir!” she came out with lively directness. ”You're not going back to Leghorn if I can help it! I--I have a plan.”

”You have a plan? From your face I am afraid not a good one. You look so dubious.”

”Perhaps it isn't a good one, but it's the only way I can see. Listen.”

She looked down at her hands, and kept him waiting. ”One evening last winter at a party a young Italian naval officer got talking to me in a green bower under a pink paper lantern away from the rest. Something in the atmosphere, I guess, made him want to talk to somebody of his love-affairs, and he chose me, though we scarcely knew each other. He told me he had been very much in love with an American girl, but they hadn't the money to marry on or the hope of ever having it--like Brenda and Manlio at first. Yet they couldn't keep apart, and so they just became engaged, knowing it couldn't end as an engagement is supposed to do. In that way they could see each other all they wanted, and be seen together without anybody making a remark. And then when she was obliged to go home and it had to end, it looked merely like a broken engagement.”

”And you propose--”

”We might try it, Gerald. Then if it didn't work well, if I found I was all the time outraging your sensibilities, and you hurting my feelings, we'd call it off. In any case we'd give ourselves plenty of time to realize our foolishness. And you'd promise that when the time came you'd go like a lamb, with a pleasant face, not saving up anything against me.

Make up your mind, now, that it'll have to be a long, _long_ engagement--if we don't repent and break it off inside a week. But as it seems so likely we will, let's don't tell the others right off, Gerald; not, anyhow, for a week or ten days.”

”Admired Aurora, it surely is the most immoral proposition that ever came from fair lady so well brought up as you!” cried Gerald, in a proper state of excitement. But yet, such were his limitations, nothing in any proportion with the throbbing fire inside him, the immensity of his incredulous joy, appeared on his outside, where merely the mollified lines of his face gave him a look of greater youth, and his cool-colored eyes let through a faint testimony of the inward light. ”I accept without hesitation. I promise whatever you ask. From this moment onward we are _fidanzati_, then. And, my blessed Auroretta, you who are such a hand at calling names, have your servant's permission to call him all the names you can think of that signify an ineffable blunderer on the day when you succeed in freeing yourself from him!”

Many more things were said, not worth recording. But at last devout silence reigned. In the twilight room, with all the bad pictures and trivial ornamentation, to shut out the offense of which he had once closed his eyes, Gerald now closed them again to concentrate more perfectly upon the rapture of feeling Aurora's shoulder beneath his cheek.

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