"How are things?" inquired Curtis.
"Nothing doing--all quiet," replied the clerk, but Curtis detected
something yet untold in the quiver of his clerk's eyelid.
"Well, I'm glad we got in."
Supper was eaten with little ceremony and very languid conversation, and
the artists at once sought their rooms to rest. The Parkers were too
tired to be nervous, and Curtis was absorbed with some private problem.
As Lawson and Elsie walked across the square in the twilight he
announced, meditatively:
"I'm going to be more and more impatient--that is now certain."
"Osborne, don't! Please don't take that tone; I don't like it."
"Why not, dear?" he asked, tenderly.
"Because--because--" She turned in a swift, overmastering impulse.
"Because if you do, I must give you back your ring." She wrung it from
her finger. "I think I must, anyhow."
As she crowded the gem into his lax hand he said: "Why, what does this
mean, Elsie Bee Bee?" His voice expressed pain and bewilderment.
"I don't know _what_ it means yet, only I feel that it isn't right now
to wear it. I told you when you put it on that it implied no promise on
my part."
"I know it, and it doesn't imply any now."
"Yes, it does. Your whole attitude towards me implies an absolute
engagement, and I can't rest under that. Take back your ring till I can
receive it as other girls do--as a binding promise. You _must_ do this
or I will hate you!" she added, with a sudden fury.
"Why, certainly, dearest--only I don't see what has produced this change
in you."
"I have not changed--you have changed."
He laughed at this. "The woman's last word! Well, I admit it. I have
come to love you as a man loves the woman he wishes to make his wife.
I'm going to care a great deal, Elsie Bee Bee, if you do not come to me
some time."
"Don't say that!" she cried, and there was an imploring accent in her
voice. "Don't you see I must not wear your ring till I promise all you
ask?"
They walked on in silence to the door. As they stood there he said: "I
feel as though I were about to say good-bye to you forever, and it makes
my heart ache."
She put both hands on his shoulders, then, swift as a bird, turned and
was gone. He felt that she had thought to kiss him, but he divined it
would have been a farewell kiss, and he was glad that she had turned
away. There was still hope for him in that indecision.
As for Elsie, life seemed suddenly less simple and less orderly. She
pitied Osborne, she was angry and dissatisfied with herself, and in
doubt about Curtis. "I'm not in love with him--it is impossible, absurd;
but my summer is spoiled. I shall go home at once. It is foolish for me
to be here when I could be at the sea-shore."
After a moment she thought: "Why am I here? I guess the girls were
right. I _am_ a crank--an irresponsible. Why should I want to paint
these malodorous tepee dwellers? Just to be different from any one
else."
As she sat at her open window she heard again the Tetong lover's flute
wailing from the hill-side across the stream, and the sound struck
straight in upon her heart and filled her with a mysterious longing--a
pain which she dared not analyze. Her mind was active to the point of
confusion--seething with doubts and the wreckage of her opinions.
Lawson's action had deeply disturbed her.
They had never pretended to sentiment in their relationship; indeed, she
had settled into a conviction that love was a silly passion, possible
only to girls in their teens. This belief she had attained by passing
through what seemed to her a fiery furnace of suffering at eighteen, and
when that self-effacing passion had burned itself out she had renounced
love and marriage and "devoted herself to art," healing herself with
work. For some years thereafter she posed as a man-hater.
The objective cause of all this tumult and flame and renunciation seemed
ridiculously inadequate in the eyes of others. He was the private
secretary of Senator Stollwaert at the time, a smug, discreet, pretty
man, of slender attainment and no great ambition. Happily, he had
afterwards removed to New York, or Washington would have been an
impossible place of residence for Elsie. She had met him once since her
return--he had had the courage to call upon her--and the familiar pose
of his small head and the mincing stride of his slender legs had given
her a feeling of nausea. "Is it possible that I once agonized over this
trig little man?" she asked herself.
To be just to him, Mr. Garretson did not presume in the least on his
previous intimacy; on the contrary, he seemed timid and ill at ease in
the presence of the woman whose beauty had by no means been foreshadowed
in her girlhood. He was not stupid; the splendor of her surroundings
awed him, but above all else there was a look on her face which too
plainly expressed contempt for her ancient folly. Her shame was as
perceptible to him as though expressed in spoken words, and his visit
was never repeated.
Of this affair Elsie had spoken quite freely to Lawson. "It only shows
what an unmitigated idiot a girl is. She is bound to love some one. I
knew quantities of nice boys, and why I should have selected poor Sammy
as the centre of all my hopes and affections I don't know. I dimly
recall thinking he had nice ears and hands, but even they do not now
seem a reasonable basis for wild passion, do they?"