She listened to his footsteps, going down and down the stone stairs,
until the echo died away; and still she stood as if she were listening,
one hand on the back of a chair, her lips parted, a faint frown on her
brow.
But the silence settled about her, and even her own fast-beating heart
and quickened breathing grew quieter.
“He’s gone,” she said aloud.
Very well! She had told him to go, and she wanted him to go. She turned
away from the doorway and went toward her bedroom.
“I never should have let him call here,” she thought. “He doesn’t
understand. He’s impossible. I knew it, too. I knew that if I gave him
an inch, he’d take ells and ells!”
She was surprised and displeased to feel tears running down her cheeks.
“How silly!” she said to herself. “I’ll see him again to-morrow; and if
he’s sorry--if he apologizes--”
She clasped her hands tight, struggling against a sob.
“I’ll go to bed and get a good night’s sleep,” she thought. “In the
morning--”
But the tears would not stop. She saw her orderly little room in a mist.
The silver on the dressing table made a dazzling blur, and the edge of
the mirror was like a rainbow.
“Silly!” she said to herself.
There before her were the precious photographs of her father and her
mother, in a double frame. She picked them up and looked at them,
blinking away the tears until the beloved faces were clear to her. They
had trusted her to come to New York alone, to manage her own life with
dignity and discretion; they counted upon her not being silly.
At this moment they would be sitting in the library at home, in the
serene quiet of their mutual affection and understanding. Perhaps her
father would be writing at his table, his gray head bent over some
scientific treatise, and her mother would be sewing or reading; but
whatever they were doing, their child would not be forgotten. The
thought of her would come to them at any moment. They must miss her, but
they were proud of her and sure of her.
“I’ve got to make Douglas see,” she said to herself. “He’s got to show
decent respect for me. I know he’s fond of me, but--”
The tears came again in a rush.
“I know he’s fond of me,” she thought, and remembered the ring.
Imagine his coming like that, with a ring to put on her finger, before
he had even asked her if she liked him! The very first time she had
asked him here, too! Catching her roughly in his arms and kissing her!
He had shown no trace of delicacy or respect, no appreciation of the
honor done him in being asked here. He knew that she was quite alone,
and he had taken advantage of it. Kissing her like that, when she had
forbidden him!
Well, she had made him realize her just resentment. She had sent him
away, him and his ring, not angrily, but quietly.
“If he had even said he was sorry,” she thought. “Perhaps he will
to-morrow.”
All the time she undressed, the tears were running down her face.
“Because I’m so disappointed,” she told herself. “I didn’t think he’d be
like that.”
She had seen him in the office every day for two months, and once she
had gone out to lunch with him, and once to dinner; and she had felt
that a very beautiful thing was beginning. She had seen in his gray eyes
a look that made her heart beat fast, had heard in his voice a queer,
grudging tenderness not to be forgotten.
She had known, of course, that he was not quite the man she had dreamed
of, no knightly figure of romance. His manner was abrupt and
domineering. More than once she had seen him lose his temper with some
unlucky fellow worker, and speak in a grim white anger that distressed
her bitterly; but he was so honest and so uncompromising! She had
respected that, and had admired his tireless energy, his undoubted
cleverness.
There were not many men of his age who had gone as far as he--head of a
department at twenty-four. Yes, she had been justified in liking him;
but there were those other things, those unreasonable things. When she
thought of him, it was not his business ability that she remembered, but
his quick smile, his steady glance, his way of scowling and running his
hand over the back of his head.
“If he just says he’s sorry to-morrow,” she thought. “If he’ll just
realize that he was--horrible!”
She fell asleep in a troubled and confused mood, and waked the next
morning with a heavy heart.
“I won’t be weak and silly,” she thought. “If he’s not sorry--if he
can’t show the proper respect for me--then it’s finished!”