"If Eve had never picked the apple."
"Well? You don't know what the world might have been like if she
hadn't, do you?"
"I can make a guess. It would have been just about as it is--if not a
little worse. She would have found a pear or a cranberry or a walnut,
any old thing." Belle leaned slightly forward and peered with genuine
concern through the thickening film of tobacco smoke at the small
blonde figure, sitting stiffly now on the bed-edge. "Anne, do you
know that I worry a lot about you sometimes? I know you're a good
stenographer and as economically independent as any woman, but it
always seems to me as if you were out of step with the world in some
way. You don't plunk, plunk along with the rest of us. You--you----"
"Sit down on the curb-stone."
"No. You mince along reluctantly. I wish to Heaven you'd get married."
Anne flushed, but Belle was grinding her cigarette stub into Anne's
lacquered pin tray and did not notice. She ground it into the polished
surface as if the tray were the problem of Anne's future and the stub
her own power of settling the difficulty. When she had burned the
delicate surface to a black spot, she went on. "But I can't for the
life of me picture the kind of man you would marry, not with your
opportunities for meeting them. An ordinary business man would drive
you as crazy as you would drive him. A professional man--well, there's
not much difference. An up-to-date doctor, even an up-to-date minister,
has just as keen an eye for the main chance as John Lowell--and
that's what seems to upset you. And even if you found one straight in
business--men are rotten morally, most of them, and you're so--I don't
know just what it is, Anne, but you're like a cool drink in a very
clean glass, and men want beer in an earthen mug when it comes right
down to everyday diet. They want it in women just as much as they do in
business."
"I don't believe it." Anne spoke with such vehement assurance that
Belle looked at her sharply.
"You don't? Why not?"
Anne wished now that she had not spoken, but the quickest way to escape
from that gimlet-like boring of Belle's eyes was to go on. "It isn't
true of all men in business and I don't see why it should be true of
all men morally."
"Did you ever know an absolutely honest business man?"
"Yes." Anne felt her face beginning to burn, and to escape the look
creeping into her sister's eyes she rose quickly and began doing
something unnecessary to the window curtain. She felt Belle's eyes
between her shoulder blades and knew that even the back of her neck was
flaming. At Belle's low chuckle she bit her lip, dragged about herself
the fast vanishing wrap of impersonal interest, and turned to her
sister with an assumption of surprise that Belle's look shattered in a
moment.
"Come on, sisterkin, this is getting interesting. Who is he?"
"I wasn't thinking of any special individual. I--there must be----"
"Cut it out, Anne, anyhow with sister Belle. When a working girl keeps
her faith in men for five years, there is always an individual."
"Shut up, Belle. I loathe that cheap talk."
"And I loathe dodging round and pretending. Who is this torch-bearer in
the darkness of the legal world?"
"He isn't a torch-bearer, but he's honest. Roger Barton." It was the
easiest way, because Belle would prod until she got it.
"That good-looking young blond? Well, how does he compromise with his
honesty and John Lowell?"
"He doesn't. He quit, too."
"Well--I'll--be darned. You both rode out of the office on the same
white palfrey! When's the wedding?"
"Will you please get out of this room?"
"Not on your life. Not till I hear the whole thrilling tale. Are you
engaged, Anne?"
"No. Will you stop?"
"What'll you bet that you won't be inside a month?"
Anne did not answer.
"All right. It would be a shame to take the money. Why, if dad had tips
like that we'd have been rich long ago. What'll you bet, then, that he
doesn't ask you?"