Part 28 (2/2)
”About a dozen times, I suppose. Why? Do I seem to you like a misanthrope?”
”I don't know,” she admitted, hesitatingly. ”You don't seem to me as though you cared to make friends very easily. I just felt I wanted to ask you. Have you ever been engaged?”
”Never,” he a.s.sured her.
”And when was the last time,” she asked, ”that you felt you cared a little for any one?”
”It dates from the day before yesterday,” he declared, filling her gla.s.s.
She laughed at him.
”Of course, it is nonsense to talk to you like this!” she said.
”You are quite right to make fun of me.”
”On the contrary,” he insisted. ”I am very much in earnest.”
”Very well, then,” she answered, ”if you are in earnest you shall be in love with me. You shall take me about, give me supper every night, send me some sweets and cigarettes to the theatre--oh, and there are heaps of things you ought to do if you really mean it!”
she wound up.
”If those things mean being fond of you,” he answered, ”I'll prove it with pleasure. Sweets, cigarettes, suppers, taxicabs at the stage-door.”
”It all sounds very terrible,” she sighed. ”It's a horrid little life.”
”Yet I suppose you enjoy it?” he remarked tentatively.
”I hate it, but I must do something. I could not live on charity.
If I knew any other way I could make money, I would rather, but there is no other way. I tried once to give music lessons. I had a few pupils, but they never paid--they never do pay.
”I wish I could think of something,” Laverick said thoughtfully.
”Of course, it is occupation you want. So far as regards the monetary part of it, I still owe your brother a great deal--”
She shook her head, interrupting him with a quick little gesture.
”No, no!” she declared. ”I have never complained about Arthur.
Sometimes he made me suffer, because I know that he was ashamed of having a relative in the chorus, but I am quite sure that I do not wish to take any of his money--or of anybody else's,” she added.
”I want always to earn my own living.”
”For such a child,” he remarked, smiling, ”you are wonderfully independent.”
”Why not?” she answered softly. ”It is years since I had any one to do very much for me. Necessity teaches us a good many things.
Oh, I was helpless enough when it began!” she added, with a little sigh. ”I got over it. We all do. Tell me--who is that woman, and why does she stare so at you?”
Laverick looked across the room. Louise and Bellamy were sitting at the opposite table. The former was strikingly handsome and very wonderfully dressed. Her closely-clinging gown, cut slightly open in front, displayed her marvelous figure. She wore long pearl earrings, and a hat with white feathers which drooped over her fair hair. Laverick recognized her at once.
<script>