"Forget what? That you don't want to give up what you've got?"
"How can I? Such things are not done out here. Why, I'm a Catholic; and
the Catholic Church--" She broke off, reading the end in his face. "But
later, perhaps ... things might change. Oh, Elmer, if only you'd stay
over here and let me see you sometimes!"
"Yes--the way your friends see each other. We're differently made out in
Apex. When I want that sort of thing I go down to North Fifth Street for
it."
She paled under the retort, but her heart beat high with it. What he
asked was impossible--and she gloried in his asking it. Feeling her
power, she tried to temporize. "At least if you stayed we could be
friends--I shouldn't feel so terribly alone."
He laughed impatiently. "Don't talk magazine stuff to me, Undine Spragg.
I guess we want each other the same way. Only our ideas are different.
You've got all muddled, living out here among a lot of loafers who call
it a career to run round after every petticoat. I've got my job out at
home, and I belong where my job is."
"Are you going to be tied to business all your life?" Her smile was
faintly depreciatory.
"I guess business is tied to ME: Wall Street acts as if it couldn't get
along without me." He gave his shoulders a shake and moved a few steps
nearer. "See here, Undine--you're the one that don't understand. If I
was to sell out to-morrow, and spend the rest of my life reading art
magazines in a pink villa, I wouldn't do what you're asking me. And
I've about as much idea of dropping business as you have of taking to
district nursing. There are things a man doesn't do. I understand
why your husband won't sell those tapestries--till he's got to. His
ancestors are HIS business: Wall Street's mine."
He paused, and they silently faced each other. Undine made no attempt
to approach him: she understood that if he yielded it would be only to
recover his advantage and deepen her feeling of defeat. She put out her
hand and took up the sunshade she had dropped on entering. "I suppose
it's good-bye then," she said.
"You haven't got the nerve?"
"The nerve for what?"
"To come where you belong: with me."
She laughed a little and then sighed. She wished he would come nearer,
or look at her differently: she felt, under his cool eye, no more
compelling than a woman of wax in a show-case.
"How could I get a divorce? With my religion--"
"Why, you were born a Baptist, weren't you? That's where you used to
attend church when I waited round the corner, Sunday mornings, with one
of old Hober's buggies." They both laughed, and he went on: "If you'll
come along home with me I'll see you get your divorce all right. Who
cares what they do over here? You're an American, ain't you? What you
want is the home-made article."
She listened, discouraged yet fascinated by his sturdy inaccessibility
to all her arguments and objections. He knew what he wanted, saw his
road before him, and acknowledged no obstacles. Her defense was drawn
from reasons he did not understand, or based on difficulties that did
not exist for him; and gradually she felt herself yielding to the steady
pressure of his will. Yet the reasons he brushed away came back with
redoubled tenacity whenever he paused long enough for her to picture the
consequences of what he exacted.
"You don't know--you don't understand--" she kept repeating; but she
knew that his ignorance was part of his terrible power, and that it was
hopeless to try to make him feel the value of what he was asking her to
give up.
"See here, Undine," he said slowly, as if he measured her resistance
though he couldn't fathom it, "I guess it had better be yes or no right
here. It ain't going to do either of us any good to drag this thing out.
If you want to come back to me, come--if you don't, we'll shake hands on
it now. I'm due in Apex for a directors' meeting on the twentieth, and
as it is I'll have to cable for a special to get me out there. No, no,
don't cry--it ain't that kind of a story ... but I'll have a deck suite
for you on the Semantic if you'll sail with me the day after to-morrow."