Christine and Paul were peaceably reading that evening in their model
sitting room. The room was properly ventilated, the air was kept at the
correct degree of humidity, the lighting was restful and hygienic, the
furnishings were all in the best of taste.
They were a serious young couple. Paul was reading “Post-War Conditions
in Beluchistan,” Christine was reading “Civilization’s Last Sigh,” and
they concentrated their attention upon the books. Beside Paul, on the
table, lay the three cigarettes which he allowed himself every evening,
while Christine had three ounces of milk chocolate. There was not a
sound from either of them, because the correct hygienic temperature, the
bland light, and their own well balanced temperaments, prevented them
from being fidgety. They had made up their minds that marriage should
not make them frivolous, narrow, or dull, and it had not.
It was a January night of cruel, silent cold, black as the pit. It was
nearly ten o’clock, and they certainly expected no intruders upon their
serious quiet. Once, when Paul found that he had not exactly grasped the
meaning of a paragraph, and had to turn back, he glanced up. By chance
Christine also looked up, so that he met her eyes--her clear, honest
blue eyes, so soft as they rested upon his face that he grew a little
dizzy with the joy of it.
He could not take Christine quite sensibly yet. He knew that she was
nothing but a human being, with many faults; yet very often he had wild
hallucinations that she was an angel, a goddess, a mystery. She may have
been subject to similar delusions, for she continued to look at her
Paul, half smiling, as if lost in the contemplation of a miracle.
But suddenly their peace was destroyed--and for a good long time, too,
as it happened--by the sound of the doorbell and the entrance of a
glowing, dark-eyed girl with a tam-o’-shanter and a scarf of violent
green. She brought an icy breath of air with her, but she herself seemed
warm, almost fiery, with her rosy cheeks, her red hair, her gay and
confident manner.
“Excuse me, people!” she said. “I know it’s an awfully unconventional
time to burst in on you, but I’ve locked myself out of my poor little
house, and I’d rather be a little unmannerly than freeze!”
Paul drew forward a chair, and down she sat, drawing off woolen gloves
from a pair of very pretty little hands. She was very pretty,
altogether, in a startling sort of way, and she had an incomparable
self-possession.
“My name’s Lucille Banks,” she remarked. “I’ve taken that little cottage
down at the crossroads. I moved in this morning, and I was so busy
getting settled that I forgot about dinner until awfully late. Then I
went out to buy something to eat, and I forgot my key.”
“But you’re not alone in the cottage?” said Christine.
“Lord, yes!” replied the other cheerfully. “I don’t mind that. I’m used
to being alone. I like it.” She laughed. “I look like a kid, but I’m
not,” she said. “I’m twenty-four. I was with the Red Cross in Italy.
I’ve lived in Paris and London. I did a thousand miles by airplane. I’ve
written a book. So you see!”
The serious couple were astounded and greatly interested.
“But where could you get anything to eat at this hour in this place?”
asked Christine.
“I couldn’t. I didn’t; but that doesn’t bother me. I’ve never pampered
myself by eating a certain amount of food at certain intervals. If I
could possibly beg a cigarette?”
“Oh, by all means!” said Paul hastily, and brought out his case.
Christine protested.
“Let me get you something to eat, instead,” she said. “It’s so bad for
you to--”
“Nothing hurts me,” Miss Banks coolly interrupted. “Even if it did hurt
me, I shouldn’t care. I’m going to do all the things I like to do, and
hang the consequences!”
This speech did not please Christine very much. She glanced at Paul.
Somewhat to her surprise, she found him with a faint smile on his lips.
“Every one who says ‘hang the consequences’ thinks there won’t really be
any,” he said.
“Consequences fall alike upon the just and the unjust,” remarked Miss
Banks, through a cloud of smoke.
She, too, was smiling now, with her strong little white teeth gleaming,
her dark eyes alight. She went on to express her audacious theories of
life, and her energetic and reckless views about everything else, at
some length.
Christine liked it less and less. She admitted freely that this Miss
Banks was extraordinarily pretty, and had a debonair charm of her own,
but she imagined that the girl was not to be trusted very far. She felt
sure that Paul would think as she did, for they always agreed; so she
looked at him, and the expression on his face surprised her. He was
regarding Miss Banks with a sort of indulgence, almost compassionate, as
if she were a rash and silly child, and he a man of the world.
Until this moment, Christine had looked upon Paul as a comrade, a
friend, whose heart she knew as she knew her own; but now it suddenly
occurred to her that Paul had been alive for twenty-six years before she
had seen him, existing and thriving by himself. For some reason this
idea hurt and dismayed her. She no longer listened to the lively
dialogue between him and Miss Banks. She wasn’t good at talking; what
she liked was to listen to Paul--but to Paul when he was talking to
herself, not to Miss Banks.
“Of course I’m not interesting,” she thought. “I’ve never done anything
but grow up and go to college and get married. I’ve never seen Paul so
interested!”
Her far from pleasant reverie was disturbed by Miss Banks springing up.
“Well!” she said. “If you _can_ get me into my little house, please do.
I’ve got to be up early to-morrow morning, to cover the Industrial
Women’s Peace Convention for my paper.”
“Are you--” began Christine.
“I’m a free lance journalist,” said Miss Banks. “I suppose they picked
me for this job because I don’t know anything about industry, and hate
peace and women!”
Paul had risen.
“Do you hate women?” he asked in that same amused, indulgent tone.
“As much as Nietzsche did,” Miss Banks assured him. “Only in general, of
course. There are exceptions.”
She smiled at Christine and held out her hand--which Christine had to
take, and from which she received a fierce grasp that tingled through
her arm and positively made the color rise in her face.
“You little beast!” she murmured, with energy, as Paul and Miss Banks
went out of the front door.