"I shall sleep here."
She had passively despised him, whenever she had thought about him at
all in those years of his subservience to her. For the first time she
was looking at him with a feeling akin to respect.
"Good night," she murmured sweetly.
"Good night," curtly from him.
The watching servants were astonished at her expression of buoyant good
humor, were astounded when she said with careless cheerfulness to the
butler, "Thomas, telephone Violette the first thing in the morning to
come for those tapestries he brought to-day. Tell him I'll call and
explain."
*XVIII*
*ARMSTRONG PROPOSES*
Armstrong lingered in the entrance to the apartment house where Neva
lived, dejection and irritation plain upon his features. At no time
since he met her at Trafford's had he so longed to see her; and the
elevator boy had just told him she was out. The boy's manner was
convincing, but Armstrong was supersensitive about Neva.
She had received him often, and was always friendly; but always with a
reserve, the more disquieting for its elusiveness. And whenever he
tried to see her and failed, he suspected her of being unwilling to
admit him. Sometimes the suspicion took the form of a belief it was a
_tete-a-tete_ with the painter which she would not let him interrupt.
Again, he feared she had decided not to admit him any more. It would be
difficult to say which made him the gloomier--the feeling that he was,
at best, a distant second, or the feeling that he was not placed at all.
Never before in his relation with any human being, man or woman, had he
been so exasperatingly at a disadvantage as with her. The fact that
they had been married, which apparently ought to have made it impossible
for her to maintain any barrier of reserve against him, once she had
accepted him as a friend, was somehow just the circumstance that
prevented him from making any progress whatever with her. And this was
highly exasperating to a man of his instinct and passion and ability for
conquest and dominion over all about him, men as well as women.
"I'm making a fool of myself. I'm letting her make a fool of me," he
thought angrily, as he stood in the entrance. "I'll not come again."
But he had made this same decision each time he was met with "Not at
home," and had nevertheless reappeared at her door after a few weeks of
self-denial. So, he mocked himself even as he was bravely resolving.
He gazed up and down the street. His face brightened. Far down the long
block, toward Fifth Avenue, he saw a slim, singularly narrow figure,
thin yet nowhere angular; beautiful shoulders and bust, narrow hips; a
fascinating simple dress of brown, a sable stole and muff, a graceful
brown hat with three plumes. "Distinguished" was the word that seemed to
him to describe what he could see, thus far. As she drew near, he noted
how her clear skin, her eyes, her hair all had the sheen that proclaims
health and vivid life. "But she would never have looked like this, or
have been what she is, if she had not got rid of me," he said to himself
by way of consolation.
"Won't you take a walk?" he asked, when they met half way between the
two avenues. The friendliness of her greeting dispelled his ill humor;
sometimes that same mere friendliness was the cause of a stinging
irritation.
"Come back with me," she replied. "I'm always in at this time.
Besides, to-day I have an engagement--no, not just yet--not until Boris
comes. Then, he and I are going out."
"Oh--Raphael! Always Raphael."
"Almost always," said she. "Almost every day--often twice a day,
sometimes three times a day."
His dealings with women had been in disregard and disdain of their
"feminine" methods; but he did know the men who use that same
indirection to which women are compelled because nature and the human
societies modeled upon its savage laws decree that woman shall deal with
men in the main through their passions. He, therefore, suspected that
Neva's frank declaration was not without intent to incite. But, to
suspect woman's motive rarely helps man; in his relations with her he is
dominated by a force more powerful than reason, a force which compels
him to acts of which his reason, though conscious and watchful, is a
helpless spectator. Armstrong's feeling that Neva was not unwilling to
give herself the pleasure of seeing him jealous of Raphael did not help
him toward the self-control necessary to disappoint her. Silent before
his rising storm, he accompanied her to the studio. Alone with her
there, he said abruptly:
"Do you think any human being could fall in love with me?"
She examined him as if impartially balancing merits and demerits. "Why
not?" she finally said.
"I've sometimes thought there was a hardness in me that repels."
"Perhaps you're right," she admitted. "You'll probably never know until
you yourself fall in love."
"What is your objection to me?"
"Mine?" She seemed to reflect before answering. "The principal one, I
think, is your tyranny. You crush out every individuality in your
neighborhood. You seem to want a monopoly of the light and air."
"Was that what used to make you so silent and shut up in yourself?"