Part 3 (1/2)

”I'm not sure,” she replied, with an evident honesty; ”I am trying to make up my mind now. But I hope not, it will bring so much trouble. I do all I can to avoid that; I really hate to hurt people. If it happens, though, what can you do? Which is worse--to damage others or yourself?

Of course, underneath I am entirely selfish; I have to be; I always was.

Art is the most exhausting thing that is. But I don't know a great deal about it; other people, who act rather badly, can explain so fully.”

From where Lee sat he could see Cytherea; the unsteady light fell on the gilt headdress, the black hair and the pale disturbing smile. She seemed to have paused in a slow graceful walk, waiting, with that wisdom at once satirical and tender, for him. Together, slowly, deliberately, they would move away from the known, the commonplace, the bound, into the unknown--dark gardens and white marble and the murmur of an ultramarine sea. He was rudely disturbed by the entrance of Anette and Peyton Morris. ”We're so sorry,” Anette said in an exaggerated air of apology; ”come on away, Peyton.” But the latter told Lee that f.a.n.n.y was looking for him. ”We are ready to go over to the Club; it's ten minutes past eight.”

Mina Raff gazed up at the doll. ”I have an idea the devil made you,” she declared.

”You are to go with us, Mina,” Peyton told her; ”if you will get your cloak--” The two women left, and Morris demanded:

”What was that d.a.m.ned rot about the doll?”

”Miss Raff wanted it.”

”Well, why not?”

Lee Randon turned away coldly. ”Little girls can't have everything they put their eyes on.” Morris muttered, and Lee asked, ”What's that?” The other failed to reply, but his remark had sounded remarkably like, ”She can.” Going, Lee looked back involuntarily: he hadn't, after all, imagined Cytherea's quality, Mina Raff had recognized it, too; the dance had lost its attraction for him.

The automobiles started in a concentration of accelerated gasoline explosions, their headlights sweeping across the house and plunging into the farther night. f.a.n.n.y gathered her wrap closely about her throat.

”I'm cold,” she a.s.serted; ”it was so nice at home, with the children, and plans--I intend to take out that yellow rambler and try a climbing American beauty rose there. What a lovely dress of Anette's; it must be the one she's been talking about so much, that Miss Zillinger made; really good for Eastlake. What was that man's name who was in the navy, and did you notice his rank? The officers of the navy are a lot better looking than army men. And Mina Raff, after all did you find her interesting?”

”Quite. She struck me as very intelligent.” He had no wish to repeat the conversation about Cytherea. It was queer, that; the more he considered it the more significant it appeared to be. ”Did it seem to you,” he asked, ”that Peyton was very attentive?”

”I didn't have time to notice. Do you think it's true about her getting all that money? It looks almost wicked to me, with so many people needing just a little. But anybody could see that she thinks only of herself; I don't mean she isn't charitable, but in--in other ways.”

They were late, and the main floor was being emptied of a small crowd moving into the dining-room. There the long table of the club dinner reached from end wall to wall; and, with the sc.r.a.ping of chairs, a confusion of voices, the places were filled. Lee found himself between Bemis Fox, a younger girl familiar enough at the dances but whose presence had only just been recognized, and Mrs. Craddock, in Eastlake for the winter. Anette was across the board, and her lips formed the query, ”The first dance?”

Lee Randon nodded; he was measurably fond of her; he usually enjoyed a party at which he found Anette. That she liked him was very evident; not desperately, but enough to dispose of most restraint; she repeated to Lee what stories, formal and informal, men told her, and she asked his advice about situations always intimate and interesting.

The flood of voices, sustained on c.o.c.ktails, rose and fell, there were challenges down the length of the table and quickly exchanged confidences. Bemis, publicly ingenuous, laid a light eager hand on his arm, and Mrs. Craddock answered a question in a decided manner. The dinner, Lee saw, was wholly characteristic of the club and its members: they had all, practically, known each other for years, since childhood; meeting casually on the street, in the discharge of a common living, their greetings and conversation were based on mutual long familiarity and recognized facts; but here, at such dances, they put on, together with the appropriate dress, a totally other aspect.

An artificial and exotic air enveloped whatever they did and said--hardy perennials, Lee thought, in terms f.a.n.n.y's rather than his, they were determined to transform themselves into the delicate and rare flowers of a conservatory. Women to whom giggling was an anomaly giggled persistently; others, the perfect forms of housewife and virtue, seemed intent on creating the opposite engaging impression; they were all seriously, desperately, addressed to a necessity of being as different from their actual useful fates as possible.

The men, with the exception of the very young and the perpetually young, were, Lee Randon knew, more annoyed than anything else; there was hardly one of them who, with opportunity, would not have avoided the dinner as a d.a.m.ned nuisance; scarcely a man would have put his stamp of approval on that kind of entertainment. It was the women who engineered it, the entire society of America, who had invented all the popular forms of pleasure; it was their show, for the magnifying of their charms and the spectacle of their gay satins and scented lace; and the men came, paid, with a good humor, a patience, not without its resemblance to imbecility. Women, Lee continued, constantly complained about living in a world made by men for men; but the truth of that was very limited: in the details, the details which, enormously multiplied, filled life, women were omnipotent. No man could withstand the steady friction, the inexhaustible wearing, of feminine prejudice; forever rolled in the resistless stream of women's ambition, their men became round and smooth and admirable, like pebbles. This, he saw, in f.a.n.n.y's loving care, was happening to him: she had spun him into the center of a silken web--

”You are not very polite,” Mrs. Craddock said.

”Are you a mind-reader,” he replied, ”or haven't I heard you?”

”It doesn't matter,” she explained, ”but you were so far away.”

He told her something of what had been in his thoughts, and she rewarded him with a swift speculative interest. ”I hadn't realized you were so critical about your guinea hen,” she acknowledged. ”Well, if what you say is true, what can you do about it?”

”Nothing,” Lee returned non-committally; ”I am comfortable.” This, he instantly decided, sounded unfair to f.a.n.n.y, and he subst.i.tuted happy.

Mrs. Craddock obviously was not interested in the change. ”I get as tired of this as you do,” she a.s.serted abruptly; ”it's like being on a merry-go-round someone else started and can't stop. You have no idea how we get to hate the tunes.”

”But you mustn't forget the chance of catching a gold ring,” he reminded her.

”It's bra.s.s,” Mrs. Craddock a.s.serted.