Part 19 (1/2)
”They may be said to have bought up several climates. I have spent a great many hours puzzling over that question, for they have put an end to the old days when young men could go into business with the hope of a progressive future. Now they are swallowed up at once, depersonalized, and the whole matter is one of the great questions affecting the future development of the Republic.”
He was not looking at Betty; he was staring out on the lake. His eyes and mouth were hard again; he looked like a mere intellect, nothing more.
As Betty watched him, she experienced a sudden desire to put him back on the pedestal he had occupied in the first days of their acquaintance, and to wors.h.i.+p him as an ideal and forget him as a man.
That had been a period of intellectual days and quiet nights. And as he looked now, he seemed to ask no more of any woman.
But in a moment he had turned to her again with the smile and the peculiar concentration of gaze which made women forget he was a statesman.
”Not another word of politics,” he said. ”I did not get up at four in the morning to meet the most charming woman in America and talk politics. Do you know that it is over three months since I saw you last?”
”You left Was.h.i.+ngton, so, naturally, I left it too.”
”I wonder, how much you mean? If I were to judge you by myself--Your few notes were very interesting. Did you enjoy California?”
”California was made to enjoy, but I felt very much alone in it.”
”Of course you did. Nature is a wicked old matchmaker. You have felt quite as lonely up here since your return.”
”Yes, I have! But I have had a good deal to occupy my mind. Sally terrified me by a.s.serting that Harriet and my cousin Jack Emory were in love with each other.”
”Who is Harriet?”
”Oh, you have forgotten! And you made me take her into the bosom of my family.”
”Oh--yes; I had forgotten her name. I hope she is not making trouble for you.”
”She admitted that she loves him, but insists that he does not love her, and I don't think he does.”
”Probably not. I should as soon think of falling in love with a weeping figure on a tombstone.”
”What kind of women do you fall in love with?” asked Betty, irresistibly. She was sure of herself now. The pa.s.sions of women are often calmed by the presence of their lover. Pa.s.sion is so largely mental in them that it reaches heights in the imagination that reality seldom justifies and mere propinquity quells. For this reason they often are recklessly unfair to men, who are made on simpler lines.
They had floated under the spreading arms of a thicket on the water's edge, and she was a brilliant white figure in the gloom.
”I have no recipe,” he said, smiling. ”Certainly not with the women that weep, poor things!” Betty wondered what his personal att.i.tude was to the tears of twenty years. She knew from Sally that Mrs. North had long attacks of depression. But his mind had been occupied; that meant almost everything. And his heart?
”Do you love anybody now?” she broke out. ”Is there a woman in your life? Some one who makes you happy?”
The smile left his lips. It was too much to say that it had been in his eyes, but they changed also.
”There is no woman in my life, as you put it. Why do you ask?”
”Because I want to know.”
They regarded each other squarely. In a moment he said deliberately: ”The greatest happiness that I have had in the past few months has been my friends.h.i.+p with you. If I were free, I should make love to you. If you will have the truth, I can conceive of no happiness so great as to be your husband. I have caught myself dreaming of it--and over and over again. But as it is I am not going to make love to you. When the strain becomes too great, I shall leave you. Until then--Ah, don't!”
Betty, who had dropped her head when he began to speak, had raised it slowly, and her face concealed nothing.