* * * * *
As the end of my wait upon the anxious seat drew into its last week, I
fell into a state of deep depression. Too much eating and drinking was,
of course, the cause. But I had to pass the time somehow; and what is
there to do in London but eat and drink?
Four days before the last, Rossiter came into my sitting room with
the news that Edna was calling. There arose a nice question: Would I
better send word I was out or see her? Because of my knowledge of her
persistence where her interest was really engaged, I decided to see her
and have done with. So in she came, vivacious, radiant--dressed for a
scene in which she was to be heroine, as I saw at a glance.
“Pray don’t think I’m going to repeat what I did the other day,” cried
she by way of beginning. “I’m in quite another mood.”
“So I see,” said I.
“I was horribly ashamed and disgusted with myself afterwards,” she went
on. “You must have thought me crazy. In fact, you did. You treated me
as if I were.”
“Won’t you sit?” said I, arranging a chair for her.
She smiled mischievously at me as she seated herself. “You do know
something about women,” said she. “You put this chair so that my face
would be spared the strong light.” As she said this, she turned into
the full strength of the light a face as free as a girl’s from wrinkles
or any other sign of years. “You certainly do know something about
women.”
“Very little,” said I, for it was not a time to pause and poke a
finger into the swelling bubble of woman’s baffling complexity and
unfathomable mystery. “You’ve come to tell me what it was you wanted
the other day?”
She shook her head. She was wearing a charming hat--but her costumes
were never indifferent and nearly always charming--a feat the more
remarkable because she, being a timidly conventional woman, followed
the fashions and ventured cautiously and never far in individual style.
“You’re usually right, my dear,” said she, “in your guesses at people’s
underlying motives. But you were mistaken that time. I wanted exactly
what I said. I wanted _you_.”
“Incredible,” laughed I.
“Yes--it does sound so,” conceded she. “But it’s the truth. I had a
queer attack--an attack of jealousy. I’d often heard of that sort of
thing. I fancied myself above it. Perhaps that was why I fell such
a foolish victim. But I’ve recovered completely.” And her eyes were
mocking me as if she had a secret joke on me.
“It couldn’t last long,” said I, to be saying something.
“No, perhaps not,” replied she. “At any rate, as soon as I heard of
Mary Kirkwood’s engagement I was cured--instantly cured.”
“I told you she was engaged,” said I.
“Oh, I don’t mean that Beechman person,” scoffed Edna. “She was simply
amusing herself with him. A woman--a woman of our world--might have
an affair with a man of that sort--as you men sometimes do with queer
women. But she wouldn’t think of _marrying_ him. Marriage is a serious
matter.”
“Yes, indeed,” said I.
“It’s a woman’s whole career,” pursued she. “It means not only her
position, but the position of her children, too.”
“Very serious,” said I.
“No--I mean Mary’s engagement to Count von Tilzer-Borgfeldt.”
“I hadn’t heard of it,” said I indifferently. There could be nothing in
such a silly story.
“Didn’t Bob Armitage tell you?”
“Not yet,” said I. “But why should he?”
“That’s queer,” mused she. “Perhaps he thought there might be a little
something in the talk about you and Mary, and that it would be well not
to stir things up.”
“That might account for it,” I agreed.
She was studying me closely. “I believe you really didn’t care about
Mary,” continued she. “I confess I was astonished when I first heard
that you did. She’s--” Edna laughed--“hardly up to _me_.”
“Hardly,” said I.
“But let’s not talk of her. I’ve forgotten all that. I’ve come to make
a last proposal to you.”
She was smiling, but I detected seriousness in her eyes, in her
unsteady upper lip, in her hands trying not to move restlessly.
“You don’t realize what a strong hold you have on me, Godfrey. Is it
love? Is it habit? I don’t know. But I can’t shake it off. Don’t you
think me strange, talking to you in this way?”
“Why shouldn’t you?” said I.
“It’s more like a woman who isn’t attractive to men.”
“On the contrary,” said I. “You speak like a woman accustomed to deal
with men according to her own good pleasure.”
“How shrewd that is!” said she, with an admiring glance. “How shrewd
you are! That’s what I miss in other men--in these men over here who
have so much that I admire. But they--well, they give me the feeling
that they are superficial. Do you think _I_ am superficial?”
“How could I?” said I.
“That’s an evasion,” laughed she. “You _do_ think so. And perhaps I am.
A woman ought to be. A man looks after the serious side of life. The
woman’s side is the lighter and graceful side--don’t you think so?”
“That sounds plausible,” said I.
“But I grow tired of superficial men. They give me the feeling
that--well, that they couldn’t be relied on. And you are reliable,
Godfrey. I feel about you that no matter what happened you’d be equal
to it. And that’s why I don’t want to give you up.”