Part 8 (2/2)
”Then I like shapes of clay,” said Mariana.
For an instant they looked at each other in silence. In Mariana's self-conscious eyes there was a soft suffusion of shyness; in his subjective ones there was the quickening of an involuntary interest.
”Then we agree most amicably,” he remarked, quietly. As she rose he stood facing her. ”It is time for your sleep and my work,” he added, and held out his hand.
As Mariana placed her own within it she flashed whitely with a sudden resentment of his cool dismissal.
”Good-night!” she said.
He looked down at her as she lingered before him. ”I want to be of use to you,” he said, frankly, ”but things have an unfortunate way of slipping my memory. If at any time I can serve you, just come to the fire-escape and call me.”
”No,” answered the girl, pettishly, ”certainly not.”
His brow wrinkled. ”That was rude, I know,” he rejoined, ”but I meant it honestly.”
”I have no doubt of it.”
As she turned to go he detained her with a compelling touch.
”You aren't angry?”
”No.”
”And you forgive me?”
”I have nothing to forgive. Indeed, I am grateful for your charity.”
He surveyed her in puzzled scrutiny. ”Well, I am sure I sha'n't forget you,” he said. ”Yes, I am quite sure of it.”
”What a marvellous memory!” exclaimed Mariana, crossly, and she stepped out upon the fire-escape.
”Good-night!” he called.
”Good-night!” she responded, and entered her room.
”He is very rude,” she whispered as she closed the shutters. In the half-light she undressed and sat in her night-gown, brus.h.i.+ng the heavy tangles of her hair. Then she lighted the flame before the little altar and said her prayers; kneeling with bowed head. As she turned off the light she spoke again. ”I am not sure that I don't like rudeness,” she added.
Meanwhile Algarcife had watched her vanish into the shadows, a smile lightening the gravity of his face. When she had disappeared he turned to his desk. With his singular powers of concentration, he had not taken up his pen before all impressions save those relating to the subject in hand had been banished from his mind. His expression was buoyant and alert. Turning over his papers, he pa.s.sed with a sense of reinvigoration to the matter before him.
”Yes; I think, after all, that a strongly modified theory of pangenesis may survive,” he said.
CHAPTER VI
At the extreme end of the corridor upon which Mariana's door opened there was a small apartment occupied by three young women from the South, who were bent upon aims of art.
They had moved in a month before, and had celebrated a room-warming by asking Mariana and several of the other lodgers to a feast of beer and pretzels. Since then the girl had seen them occasionally. She knew that they lived in a semi-poverty-stricken Bohemia, and that the pretty one with pink cheeks and a ragged and uncurled fringe of hair, whose name was Freighley, worked in Mr. Nevins's studio and did chrysanthemums in oils. She had once heard Mr. Nevins remark that she was a pupil worth having, and upon asking, ”Has she talent?” had met with, ”Not a bit, but she's pretty.”
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