"That's what they say," replied she, with ominous irritation.
"Still--some girls--_lots_ of girls seem to get on mighty well without
being so terribly particular."
"You ought to see them after a few years."
"I'm only twenty-one," laughed she. "I've got lots of time before I'm
old. . . . You haven't--married?"
"No," said he.
"I thought I'd have heard, if you had." She laughed queerly--again shook
out her hair, and it shimmered round her face and over her head and out
from her shoulders like flames. "You've got a kind of a--Mr. Tetlow way
of talking. It doesn't remind me of you as you were in Jersey City."
She said nothing, she suggested nothing that had the least impropriety
in it, or faintest hint of impropriety. It was nothing positive, nothing
aggressive, but a certain vague negative something that gave him the
impression of innocence still innocent but looking or trying to look
tolerantly where it should not. And he felt dizzy and sick, stricken
with shame and remorse and jealous fear. Yes--she was sliding slowly,
gently, unconsciously down to the depth in which he had been lying, sick
and shuddering--no, to deeper depths--to the depths where there is no
light, no trace of a return path. And he had started her down. He had
done it when he, in his pride and selfishness, had ignored what the
success of his project would mean for her. But he knew now; in
bitterness and shame and degradation he had learned. "I was infamous!"
he said to himself.
She began to talk in a low, embarrassed voice:
"Sometimes I think of getting married. There's a young man--a young
lawyer--he makes twenty-five a week, but it'll be years and years before
he has a good living. A man doesn't get on fast in New York unless he
has pull."
Norman, roused from his remorse, blazed inside. "You are in love with
him?"
She laughed, and he could not tell whether it was to tease him or to
evade.
"You'd not care about him long," said Norman, "unless there were more
money coming in than he'd be likely to get soon. Love without money
doesn't go--at least, not in New York."
"Do you suppose I don't know that?" said she with the irritation of one
faced by a hateful fact. "Still--I don't see what to do."
Norman, biting his lip and fuming and observing her with jealous eyes,
said in the best voice he could command, "How long have you been in love
with him?"
"Did I say I was in love?" mocked she.
"You didn't say you weren't. Who is he?"
"If you'll stay on about half an hour or so, you'll see him. No--you
can't. I've got to get dressed before I let him up. He has very strict
ideas--where I'm concerned."
"Then why did you let _me_ come up?" Norman said, with a penetrating
glance.
She lowered her gaze and a faint flush stole into her cheeks. Was it
confession of the purpose he suspected? Or, was it merely embarrassment?
"I heard of a case once," continued Norman, his gaze significantly
direct, "the case of a girl who was in love with a poor young fellow.
She wanted money--luxury. Also, she wanted the poor young fellow."
The color flamed into the girl's face, then left it pale. Her white
fingers fluttered with nervous grace into her masses of hair and back to
her lap again, to rest there in timid quiet.
"She knew another man," pursued Norman, "one who was able to give her
what she wanted in the way of comfort. So, she decided to make an
arrangement with the man, and keep it hidden from her lover--and in that
way get along pleasantly until her lover was in better circumstances ."
Her gaze was upon her hands, listless in her lap. He felt that he had
spoken her unspoken, probably unformed thoughts. Yes, unformed. Men and
women, especially women, habitually pursued these unacknowledged
and--even unformed purposes, in their conflicts of the desire to get
what they wanted and their desire to appear well to themselves.
"What would you think of an arrangement like that?" asked he, determined
to draw her secret heart into the open where he could see, where she
could see.
She lifted frank, guileless eyes to his. "I suppose the girl was trying
to do the best she could."
"What do you think of a girl who'd do that?"
"I don't judge anybody--any more. I've found out that this world isn't
at all as I thought--as I was taught."
"Would _you_ do it?"
She smiled faintly. "No," she replied uncertainly. Then she restored his
wavering belief in her essential honesty and truthfulness by adding:
"That is to say, I don't think I would."
She busied herself with her hair, feeling it to see whether it was not
yet dry, spreading it out. He looked at her unseeingly. At last she
said: "You must go. I've got to get dressed."
"Yes--I must be going," said he absently, rising and reaching for his
hat on the center table.