Part 3 (2/2)

”You, if anybody.” I answered him with the occasional absolute truthfulness which occurs between a man and a woman when they are completely lifted out of themselves. Something more than mere pleasure shone in his eyes. It was as if I had reached his soul.

”If no man ever has been all that a woman in love really believes him, the best a man could do would be to take care that she never found out her mistake,” he said slowly.

”Exactly,” I said; ”you are getting on. It is only another way of making yourself live up to her ideal of you.”

”Supposing after all, that the woman I love will have none of me,” he said, unconsciously slipping from the third person to the first.

”I wouldn't admit even the possibility if I were a man. I would besiege the fortress. I would sit on her front doorstep until she gave in. Don't ask her to have you. Tell her you are going to have her whether or no,” I cried, thinking of Rachel's words. He looked so encouraged that I am afraid I have sent him post-haste to the Flossy girl, and gotten him into life-long trouble. But I had gone too far. I quite hurried, in my accidental endeavor to s.h.i.+pwreck him.

”Men do not understand these things, because they will not give time enough to them. Real love-making requires the patience, the tenderness, the sympathy which women alone possess in the highest degree. Possibly she loves you deeply, only you do not believe it. Gauged by a woman's love, many men love, marry, and die, without even approximating the real grand pa.s.sion themselves, or comprehending that which they have inspired, for no one but a woman can fathom a woman's love.”

I couldn't help going on after I started, for he was thinking of the other woman, and looking at me in a way that would have made my heart turn over, if I hadn't been an Old Maid, and known that his look was not for me.

Then he ground my rings into my hand until I nearly shrieked with the pain, and said, ”G.o.d bless you!” very hoa.r.s.ely, and dashed out of the house before I could pull myself together. _I_ say so too. G.o.d bless me, what have I done? I've sent him straight to that Flossy girl. I feel it.

I've smoothed out something between them. I have accidentally made him articulate, and articulation in such a man as Percival is overpowering. He is a murdered man, and mine is the hand that slew him.

Tabby, old maids are a public nuisance, not to say dangerous. They ought to be suppressed.

I wonder if he will burst in upon her with that look upon his face!

V

THE HEART OF A COQUETTE

”Strange, that a film of smoke can blot a star!”

He did. And the woman was--Rachel. Tabby, I never was better pleased with myself in my life. I love old maids. I think that whenever they are accidental they are perfectly lovely. But _what_ a risk I ran!

I did not know a thing about it until I received their wedding-cards. It was just like Rachel not to tell me, and it was insufferably stupid in me not to use the few wits I am possessed of, and see how matters stood. But my fears and tremors were that Frankie Taliaferro would get him, so I have watched her all this time. Percival laughed almost scornfully when I told him this, and said I had been barking up the wrong tree. I retaliated by saying that if they had been ordinary lovers, I never could have made such a mistake, and they took it as a great compliment. When I consider the general run of engaged people, I am inclined to agree with them.

Everybody seems to think they are making an experiment of marriage, because they are so much alike. But, then, doesn't every one who marries at all, Jew or Gentile, black or white, bond or free, make an experiment?

I myself have no fear as to how the Percival experiment will turn out.

Rachel says that they are so similar in all their tastes and ideals that if she were a man she would be Percival, and if he were a woman he would be Rachel. ”Then you still would have a chance to marry each other,” I said frivolously. But she a.s.sented with a depth of feeling which ignored my feeble attempt to be cheerful. ”Yet,” she continued, ”there is a subtle, alluring difference in our thoughts; just enough to add piquancy, not irritation, to a discussion. I do not love white, and he does not love black, as so many husbands and wives do. We both love gray; different tones of gray, but still gray. It is very restful.” The Percivals are not only restful to themselves, but to others. They used to be in the highly irritable, nervous state of those whose sensitive organisms are a little too fine for this world. I never objected to it myself, but I have said before that Rachel was of no use to ordinary society, and Percival was little better. When people failed to understand her, she retired into herself with a dignity which was mistaken for ill-temper. She is too refined and high-minded to defend herself against the ”slings and arrows of outrageous” people, although if she would, she could exterminate them with her wit. And some could so easily be spared. It seems, too, that she is great enough to be a target, so she is under fire continually. This, while it causes her exquisite suffering, is from no fault of her own--save the unforgivable one of being original. ”A frog spat at a glow-worm. 'Why do you spit at me?' said the glow-worm. 'Why do you s.h.i.+ne so?' said the frog.” And as to Percival--the man I used to know was Percival in embryo.

He is maturing now, and is radiant in Rachel's sympathetic comprehension of him. He refers to the time before he knew her as his ”protoplasmic state,” as indeed it was. But there are a good many of us who would be willing to remain protoplasm all our lives to possess a t.i.the of his genius--you and I among the number, Tabby. You needn't look at me so reproachfully out of your old-gold eyes. You know you would.

You have seen Sallie c.o.x, haven't you? Then you know how it jarred my nerves to have her rush in upon me when my mind was full of the Percivals.

Sallie has flirted joyously through life thus far, and has appeared to have about as little heart as any girl I ever knew. Sallie is the _sauce piquante_ in one's life--absolutely necessary at times to make things taste at all, but a little of her goes a long way. At least so I thought until to-day.

”I've got something to tell you, Ruth,” she said, ”so come with me, and we will take a little drive before going to cooking-school.”

I went, knowing, of course, that she wanted to confide something about some of her lovers.

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