I
Alone in the street car, Stella brooded it all miserably. “How unhappy I
am,” she thought. And then she faltered: “I didn’t realize....” Yet she
asked herself, too, what could be left unsaid if the scene were to be
played over—“except, maybe, the actual breaking off...?” Everything she
had said was quite true, yet her heart was not at rest. “I don’t seem
to know which way to turn any more,” she told herself darkly, almost in
tears.
Meanwhile Jerome, continuing home on foot, argued that what had occurred
was no great matter. She had succeeded really in arousing him, and his
mood was surprisingly energetic.
“Well, if she feels _that_ way....” He muttered the opening phrases of
many very vigorous statements designed to cover his feelings; but for
the most part they were destined to an eternal suspension. “I guess I’m
not _quite_ so hopeless....” Well, the thing had happened, and there was
an end of it. There would be no longer any special reason why he should
vividly picture her in his mind when they were apart; yet, curiously
enough, now their ways were sundered, he found himself picturing her with
singular vividness. “A fine thing,” he thought, “to keep at a fellow
about!” Perhaps there was more to be got out of life, but had she given
any hint as to how it was to be managed? She _had_ not! He bolstered his
outraged ego the whole of the way.
Arrived at his own house, Jerome went at once to his room. He washed in
a desultory manner, then proceeded to plaster his hair down very slick,
even dipping the brush into the water pitcher to facilitate the process.
His evening toilet completed, the young man sat down in a straight chair,
tipped himself rakishly back against the wall, knocked the caked ashes
out of his jaunty little pipe, filled it with tobacco from a tumbler
supposed to hold his toothbrush, and began pulling away in a comfortable,
dignified fashion. He flattered himself he didn’t exactly resemble the
traditional conception of a man who has just passed through the ordeal of
a broken engagement, and tried to persuade himself that Stella would be
the heavier loser of the two.