Rodrigo walked slowly into the offices of the Italian-American Line
late the next morning, like a man lately condemned to the scaffold,
and booked passage on a vessel sailing for Naples the following
Saturday. Then he took the subway uptown.
The warm sun drenching the exhibition rooms of Dorning and Son, the
cheerful good mornings of the clerks, mocked at his mood. He
summoned a masking smile on his face and held it while he opened the
door of John's office and strode in. Mary was sitting beside John at
the latter's desk, their heads quite close together. They had been
talking confidentially, almost gayly. Their faces sobered as they
looked up at the intruder. It seemed a warning to Rodrigo that he
must go through with his program. The faint hope, conceived the
night before, that the "developments" Mary had written him about,
concerned the discovery of Elise's treachery only and had nothing to
do with an announcement of a troth between Mary and John, vanished.
It was unmistakable. They loved each other. It showed in the quick,
warning glance that passed between them as he entered, in the way
they almost sprang apart at the sight of a third person.
They greeted him warmly enough, and almost immediately John departed
on the excuse of a conference with Henry Madison. Rodrigo took the
seat that his partner had vacated. He did not have to urge Mary to
remain.
His voice simulated a careless nonchalance as he smiled at her and
said, "I hadn't a chance hardly to say a word to you yesterday, Mary."
"That wasn't my fault," she pouted. He was surprised to discover
that Mary could pout. He thought she had never looked more adorable.
Sophie, Rosa, Elise--never in their prime had they been as beautiful
as Mary.
"Did you enjoy your vacation?" she asked unexpectedly.
"Very much," he replied, smiling as if in memory. "You know, Mary,
there's no use pretending--I've never changed. I found it out when I
got abroad. I can't play the hermit. It isn't in me. Over here,
with you around, perhaps, I can hold myself in leash. But I am not
like you or John, like Americans, at heart. There is something in my
blood. I was torn up physically and emotionally when I left, and I
had to forget somehow. That isn't an excuse, of course, but it may
explain things to you a little. I--I sank into the old rut over
there, Mary. The different environment, the different sort of women,
the liquor, everything." He flung out his hands hopelessly, in a
continental gesture.
"You saw some of your old friends?" she asked quietly.
"Many of them. And they were unchanged too. It was the same old
story. I met a girl in Naples whose father had once blackmailed me
for an affair with her--and now I suppose he'll be blackmailing me
over again. In London, I ran across Sophie Binner. You remember
Sophie? We became quite good friends again. She seems to be my
sort. I'm what you called me--a coward." He sighed, and watched her
face.
But her face, strangely enough, did not flinch. She asked him in the
same quiet voice, "You are trying to tell me that you are the same
man you were that first day here, when you tried to play sheik with
me, flirted with me?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"I shouldn't think you would have come back here--after playing fast
and loose all over Europe, after betraying the trust John and I put
in you."
"I came in response to your letter," he said with some dignity.
"Nevertheless, you shouldn't have come in that case. You should have
stayed with your--friends."
"I know. You are right," he said. "And I am going back to--them. I
booked my passage this morning. I am sailing in a week for Italy,
and this time I am not coming back."
She started. Her face lost its imperturbability. She said, "And
that is all you have to say to me?"
He leaned toward her, his throat filling with a storm of words. But
then he fell back, lowering his head. "Yes," he said in a low voice.
"That is all--that and--please think as well as you can of me, Mary.
And go on--loving John and taking care of him."
Her lips were twitching a little now. "Do you want to know what I
really think of you?" she asked suddenly.
He raised his tired eyes, his eyes that were saying what his lips
were sealed against, and he nodded his head.
She suddenly left her chair and came to him, laid her hands upon his
shoulders, and said clearly and proudly, "I think that you are a
terrible fibber. I think you have a crazy notion that John and I are
in love. And I know this--I love you, Rodrigo, and you are never
going to leave me again."
And then he reached out and clutched her fiercely, devouringly into
his arms, kissed her again and again, crying her name pitifully like
a baby. And when at last he, still holding her tightly, raised her
face so that he could look at it and prove he was not dreaming, he
saw that she too was weeping.
He cried, "Mary! Mary! Oh, my dear," again and again. And again
and again he kissed her.
Finally he let her go to adjust her disheveled hair and clothes into
some semblance of order. She smiled at him and asked, "How could you
think I could love anybody but you--coward or no coward? Oh, I found
out while you were gone how foolish I was ever to risk losing you. I
lay awake reviling myself that I had sent you away--yes, I did send
you. And I had to have you back--or dash over to Europe and search
for you."
"But John?" he asked. "I thought John and you----"
"I love John too, but as a brother. I always have. And he has felt
the same towards me. But you--oh, my poor, poor boy!" He seized her
greedily again, and his lips were upon hers as a knock sounded upon
the door. He released her, looked at her so guiltily that she
laughed aloud.
"It is only John," she said happily. "He knows--about us. He
confirmed my suspicions that you were torturing yourself with this
silly idea that he and I were in love. He even foretold that you
would pretend to be the bold, bad man of old. John is wise, you see,
wiser even than you. But not half so----"
And then John walked in and read their faces at a glance.