“Anita,” I said, “do you still--dislike me?”
“I do not--and shall not--love you,” she answered. “But you are--”
“More endurable?” I suggested, as she hesitated.
“Less unendurable,” she said with raillery. Then she added, “Less
unendurable than profiting by a-creeping up in the dark.”
I thought I understood her better than she understood herself. And suddenly
my passion melted in a tenderness I would have said was as foreign to me
as rain to a desert. I noticed that she had a haggard look. “You are very
tired, child,” said I. “Good night. I am a different man from what I was
when I came in here.”
“And I a different woman,” said she, a beauty shining from her that was as
far beyond her physical beauty as--as love is beyond passion.
“A nobler, better woman,” I exclaimed, kissing her hand.
She snatched it away.
“If you only knew!” she cried. “It seems to me, as I realize what sort of
woman I am, that I am almost worthy of _you_!” And she blazed a look
at me that left me rooted there, astounded.
But I went down the avenue with a light heart. “Just like a woman,” I was
saying to myself cheerfully, “not to know her own mind.”
A few blocks, and I stopped and laughed outright--at Langdon's treachery,
at my own credulity. “What an ass I've been making of myself!” said I to
myself. And I could see myself as I really had been during those months
of social struggling--an ass, braying and gamboling in a lion's skin--to
impress the ladies!
“But not wholly to no purpose,” I reflected, again all in a glow at thought
of Anita.