Part 13 (1/2)
”I heard you when you came in and whispered to the nurse woman. It was mighty white of you to come.”
”What else could I do?” She seated herself in a chair by his bed.
”Because we are engaged?” he asked.
She smiled a little as he said that.
”Then you have not forgotten?”
”Forgotten!” he exclaimed. ”I'm just beginning to realize it.”
”I was afraid it might come back to you as a shock, Monte,” she said.
”But it is very convenient--at just this time.”
”I don't know what I should have done without it,” he nodded. ”It certainly gives a man a comfortable feeling to know--well, just to know there is some one around.”
”I'm glad if I've been able to do anything.”
”It's a whole lot just having you here,” he a.s.sured her.
It changed the whole character of this room, for one thing. It ceased to be merely a hotel room--merely number fifty-four attached with a big bra.s.s star to a key. It was more like a room in the Hotel des Roses, which was the nearest to home of any place Monte had found in a decade.
It was as if when she came in she completely refurnished it with little things with which he was familiar. Edhart always used to place flowers in his apartment; and it was like that.
”The only bother with the arrangement,” he said, looking serious, ”is that it takes your time. Ought n't you to be at Julien's this morning?”
She had forgotten about Julien's. Yet for the last two years it had been the very center other own individual life. Now the crowded studio, the smell of turpentine, the odd cosmopolitan gathering of fellow students, the little pangs following the bitter criticisms of the master, receded into the background until they became as a dream of long ago.
”I don't think I shall ever go to Julien's again,” she answered.
”But look here--that won't do,” he objected. ”If I'm to interfere with all your plans--”
”It isn't that, Monte,” she a.s.sured him. ”Ever since I came back this last time, I knew I did n't belong there. When Aunt Kitty was alive it was all the opportunity I had; but now--” She paused.
”Well?”
”I have my hands full with you until you get out again,” she answered lightly.
”That's what I object to,” he said; ”If being engaged is going to pin you down, then I don't think you ought to be engaged. You've had enough of that in your life.”
The curious feature of her present position was that she had no sense of being pinned down. She had thought of this in the night. She had never felt freer in her life. Within a few hours of her engagement she had been able to do exactly what she wished to do without a single qualm of conscience. She had been able to come here and look after him in this emergency. She would have done this anyway, but she knew how Marcellin and his a.s.sistant and even Nurse Duval would have made her pay for her act--an act based upon nothing but decent loyalty and honest responsibility. Raised eyebrows--gossip in the air--covert smiles--the whole detestable atmosphere of intrigue with which they would have surrounded her, had vanished as by a spell before the magic word fiancee. She was breathing air like that upon the mountain-tops.
It was sweet and clean and bracing.
”Monte,” she said, ”I'm doing at this moment just exactly what I want to do; and you can't understand what a treat that is, because you've always done just exactly as you wanted. I 'm sure I 'm entirely selfish about this, because--because I'm not making any sacrifice. You can't understand that, either, Monte,--so please don't try. I think we'd better not talk any more about it. Can't we just let it go on as it is a little while?”
”It suits me,” smiled Monte. ”So maybe I'm selfish, too.”
”Maybe,” she nodded. ”Now I'll see about your breakfast. The doctor told me just what you must have.”