"I don't believe him!"
"Then why this excitement?"
One could understand how the opposition witnesses dreaded facing him. "I
don't know just why," she stammered. "It seemed to me you were
admitting--I mean, you were confirming what that man accused you of."
"And of what did he accuse me? I might say, of what do _you_ accuse me?"
When she remained silent he went on: "I am trying to be reasonable,
Josephine. I am trying to keep my temper."
The look in her eyes--the fear, the timidity--was a startling revelation
of character--of the cowardice with which love undermines the strongest
nature. "I know I've been foolish and incoherent, Fred," she pleaded.
"But--I love you! And you remember how I always was afraid of that
girl."
"Just what do you wish to know?"
"Nothing, dear--nothing. I am not sillily jealous. I ought to be
admiring you for your generosity--your charity."
"It's neither the one nor the other," said he with exasperating
deliberateness.
She quivered. "Then _what_ is it?" she cried. "You are driving me crazy
with your evasions." Pleadingly, "You must admit they _are_ evasions."
He buttoned his coat in tranquil preparation to depart. She instantly
took alarm. "I don't mean that. It's my fault, not asking you straight
out. Fred, tell me--won't you? But if you are too cross with me,
then--don't tell me." She laughed nervously, hiding her submission
beneath a seeming of mocking exaggeration of humility. "I'll be good.
I'll behave."
A man who admired her as a figure, a man who liked her, a man who had no
feeling for her beyond the general human feeling of wishing well pretty
nearly everybody--in brief, any man but one who had loved her and had
gotten over it would have deeply pitied and sympathized with her. Fred
Norman said, his look and his tone coolly calm:
"I am backing Mr. Hallowell in a company for which he is doing chemical
research work. We are hatching eggs, out of the shell, so to speak. Also
we are aging and rejuvenating arthropods and the like. So far we have
declared no dividends. But we have hopes."
She gave a hysterical sob of relief. "Then it's only business--not the
girl at all!"
"Oh, yes, it's the girl, too," replied he. "She's an officer of the
company. In fact, it was to make a place for her that I went into the
enterprise originally." With an engaging air of frankness he inquired,
"Anything more?"
She was gazing soberly, almost somberly, into the fire. "You'll not be
offended if I ask you one question?"
"Certainly not."
"Is there anything between you and--her?"
"You mean, am I having an affair with her?"
She hung her head, but managed to make a slight nod of assent.
He laughed. "No." He laughed again. "No--not thus far, my dear." He
laughed a third time, with still stronger and stranger mockery. "She
congratulated me on my engagement with a sincerity that would have
piqued a man who was interested in her."
"Will you forgive me?" Josephine said. "What I've just been feeling and
saying and putting you through--it's beneath both of us. I suppose a
woman--no woman--can help being nasty where another woman is
concerned."