Part 7 (1/2)

”W-h-e-w!” growled Stanton, ”I'll hardly stand for that statement.”

”Well, then lie down for it,” taunted the Doctor. ”Keep right on being sick and worried and--.” Peremptorily he reached out both hands towards the box. ”Here!” he insisted. ”Let's dump the whole mischievous nonsense into the fire and burn it up!”

With an ”Ouch,” of pain Stanton knocked the Doctor's hands away. ”Burn up my letters?” he laughed. ”Well, I guess not! I wouldn't even burn up the wall papers. I've had altogether too much fun out of them. And as for the books, the Browning, etc.--why hang it all, I've gotten awfully fond of those books!” Idly he picked up the South American volume and opened the fly-leaf for the Doctor to see. ”Carl from his Molly,” it said quite distinctly.

”Oh, yes,” mumbled the Doctor. ”It looks very pleasant. There's absolutely no denying that it looks very pleasant. And some day--out of an old trunk, or tucked down behind your library encyclopedias--your wife will discover the book and ask blandly, 'Who was Molly? I don't remember your ever saying anything about a ”Molly”.--Just someone you used to know?' And your answer will be innocent enough: 'No, dear, _someone whom I never knew_!' But how about the pucker along your spine, and the awfully foolish, grinny feeling around your cheek-bones? And on the street and in the cars and at the theaters you'll always and forever be looking and searching, and asking yourself, 'Is it by any chance possible that this girl sitting next to me now--?' And your wife will keep saying, with just a barely perceptible edge in her voice, 'Carl, do you know that red-haired girl whom we just pa.s.sed?

You stared at her so!' And you'll say, 'Oh, no! I was merely wondering if--' Oh yes, you'll always and forever be 'wondering if'. And mark my words, Stanton, people who go about the world with even the most innocent chronic question in their eyes, are pretty apt to run up against an unfortunately large number of wrong answers.”

”But you take it all so horribly seriously,” protested Stanton. ”Why you rave and rant about it as though it was actually my affections that were involved!”

”Your affections?” cried the Doctor in great exasperation. ”Your affections? Why, man, if it was only your affections, do you suppose I'd be wasting even so much as half a minute's worry on you? But it's your _imagination_ that's involved. That's where the blooming mischief lies.

Affection is all right. Affection is nothing but a nice, safe flame that feeds only on one special kind of fuel,--its own particular object.

You've got an 'affection' for Cornelia, and wherever Cornelia fails to feed that affection it is mercifully ordained that the starved flame shall go out into cold gray ashes without making any further trouble whatsoever. But you've got an 'imagination' for this make-believe girl--heaven help you!--and an 'imagination' is a great, wild, seething, insatiate tongue of fire that, thwarted once and for all in its original desire to gorge itself with realities, will turn upon you body and soul, and lick up your crackling fancy like so much kindling wood--and sear your common sense, and scorch your young wife's happiness. Nothing but Cornelia herself will ever make you want--Cornelia. But the other girl, the unknown girl--why she's the face in the clouds, she's the voice in the sea; she's the glow of the sunset; she's the hush of the June twilight! Every summer breeze, every winter gale, will fan the embers!

Every thumping, twittering, tw.a.n.ging pulse of an orchestra, every--. Oh, Stanton, I say, it isn't the ghost of the things that are dead that will ever come between you and Cornelia. There never yet was the ghost of any lost thing that couldn't be tamed into a purring household pet.

But--the--ghost--of--a--thing--that--you've--never--yet--found? _That_, I tell you, is a very different matter!”

Pounding at his heart, and blazing in his cheeks, the insidious argument, the subtle justification, that had been teeming in Stanton's veins all the week, burst suddenly into speech.

”But I gave Cornelia the _chance_ to be 'all the world' to me,” he protested doggedly, ”and she didn't seem to care a hang about it!

Great Scott, man! Are you going to call a fellow unfaithful because he hikes off into a corner now and then and reads a bit of Browning, for instance, all to himself--or wanders out on the piazza some night all sole alone to stare at the stars that happen to bore his wife to extinction?”

”But you'll never be able to read Browning again 'all by yourself',”

taunted the Doctor. ”Whether you buy it fresh from the presses or borrow it stale and old from a public library, you'll never find another copy as long as you live that doesn't smell of cinnamon roses.

And as to 'star-gazing' or any other weird thing that your wife doesn't care for--you'll never go out alone any more into dawns or darknesses without the very tingling conscious presence of a wonder whether the 'other girl' _would_ have cared for it!”

”Oh, shucks!” said Stanton. Then, suddenly his forehead puckered up.

”Of course I've got a worry,” he acknowledged frankly. ”Any fellow's got a worry who finds himself engaged to be married to a girl who isn't keen enough about it to want to be all the world to him. But I don't know that even the most worried fellow has any real cause to be scared, as long as the girl in question still remains the only flesh-and-blood girl on the face of the earth whom he wishes _did_ like him well enough to want to be 'all the world' to him.”

”The only 'flesh-and-blood' girl?” scoffed the Doctor. ”Oh, you're all right, Stanton. I like you and all that. But I'm mighty glad just the same that it isn't my daughter whom you're going to marry, with all this 'Molly Make-Believe' nonsense lurking in the background. Cut it out, Stanton, I say. Cut it out!”

”Cut it out?” mused Stanton somewhat distrait. ”Cut it out? What!

Molly Make-Believe?”

Under the quick jerk of his knees the big box of letters and papers and things brimmed over in rustling froth across the whole surface of the table. Just for a second the muscles in his throat tightened a trifle. Then, suddenly he burst out laughing--wildly, uproariously, like an excited boy.

”Cut it out?” he cried. ”But it's such a joke! Can't you see that it's nothing in the world except a perfectly delicious, perfectly intangible joke?”

”U--m--m,” reiterated the Doctor.

In the very midst of his reiteration, there came a sharp rap at the door, and in answer to Stanton's cheerful permission to enter, the so-called ”delicious, intangible joke” manifested itself abruptly in the person of a rather small feminine figure very heavily m.u.f.fled up in a great black cloak, and a rose-colored veil that shrouded her nose and chin bluntly like the nose and chin of a face only half hewed out as yet from a block of pink granite.

”It's only Molly,” explained an undeniably sweet little alto voice.

”Am I interrupting you?”

VII