"Then you did interest yourself in me because you cared--precisely as I
said," laughed she.
"And I should have given you up if you had succeeded--precisely as I
said," replied he.
"You wished me to fail?"
"I wished you to fail. I did everything I could to help you to
succeed. I even left you absolutely alone, set you in the right
way--the only way in which anyone can win success."
"Yes, you made me throw away the crutches and try to walk."
"It was hard to do that. Those strains are very wearing at my time of
life."
"You never were any younger, and you'll never be any older," laughed
she. "That's your charm--one of them."
"Mildred, do you still care?"
"How did you know?" inquired she mockingly.
"You didn't try to conceal it. I'd not have ventured to say and do the
things I said and did if I hadn't felt that we cared for each other.
But, so long as you were leading that fatuous life and dreaming those
foolish dreams, I knew we could never be happy."
"That is true--oh, SO true," replied she.
"But now--you have tried, and that has made a woman of you. And you
have failed, and that has made you ready to be a wife--to be happy in
the quiet, private ways."
She was silent.
"I can make enough for us both--as much as we will need or want--as
much as you please, if you aren't too extravagant. And I can do it
easily. It's making little sums--a small income--that's hard in this
ridiculous world. Let's marry, go to California or Europe for several
months, then come back here and live like human beings."
She was silent. Block after block they walked along, as if neither had
anything especial in mind, anything worth the trouble of speech.
Finally he said:
"Well?"
"I can't answer--yet," said she. "Not to-day--not till I've thought."
She glanced quickly at him. Over his impassive face, so beautifully
regular and, to her, so fascinating, there passed a quick dark shadow,
and she knew that he was suffering. He laughed quietly, his old
careless, indifferent laugh.
"Oh, yes, you can answer," said he. "You have answered."
She drew in her breath sharply.
"You have refused."
"Why do you say that, Donald?" she pleaded.
"To hesitate over a proposal is to refuse," said he with gentle
raillery. "A man is a fool who does not understand and sheer off when
a woman asks for time."
"You know that I love you," she cried.
"I also know that you love something else more. But it's finished.
Let's talk about something else."
"Won't you let me tell you why I hesitate?" begged she.
"It doesn't matter."
"But it does. Yes, I do refuse, Donald. I'll never marry you until I
am independent. You said a while ago that what I've been through had
made a woman of me. Not yet. I'm only beginning. I'm still
weak--still a coward. Donald, I must and will be free."
He looked full at her, with a strange smile in his brilliant eyes. Said
he, with obvious intent to change the subject: "Mrs. Brindley's very
unhappy that you haven't been to see her."
"When you asked me to marry you, the only reason I almost accepted was
because I want someone to support me. I love you--yes. But it is as
one loves before one has given oneself and has lived the same life with
another. In the ordinary sense, it's love that I feel. But--do you
understand me, dearest?--in another sense, it's only the hope of love,
the belief that love will come."
He stopped short and looked at her, his eyes alive with the stimulus of
a new and startling idea.
"If you and I had been everything to each other, and you were saying
'Let us go on living the one life' and I were hesitating, then you'd be
right. And I couldn't hesitate, Donald. If you were mine, nothing
could make me give you up, but when it's only the hope of having you,
then pride and self-respect have a chance to be heard."
He was ready to move on. "There's something in that," said he, lapsed
into his usual seeming of impassiveness. "But not much."
"I never before knew you to fail to understand."
"I understand perfectly. You care, but you don't care enough to suit
me. I haven't waited all these years before giving a woman my love, to
be content with a love seated quietly and demurely between pride and
self-respect."
"You wouldn't marry me until I had failed," said she shrewdly. "Now
you attack me for refusing to marry you until I've succeeded."
A slight shrug. "Proposal withdrawn," said he. "Now let's talk about
your career, your plans."
"I'm beginning to understand myself a little," said she. "I suppose
you think that sort of personal talk is very silly and vain--and
trivial."
"On the contrary," replied he, "it isn't absolutely necessary to
understand oneself. One is swept on in the same general direction,
anyhow. But understanding helps one to go faster and steadier."
"It began, away back, when I was a girl--this idea of a career. I
envied men and despised women, the sort of women I knew and met with. I
didn't realize why, then. But it was because a man had a chance to be
somebody in himself and to do something, while a woman was just a--a
more or less ornamental belonging of some man's--what you want me to
become now."
"As far as possible from my idea."
"Don't you want me to belong to you?"
"As I belong to you."
"That sounds well, but it isn't what could happen. The fact is, Donald,
that I want to belong to you--want to be owned by you and to lose
myself in you. And it's that I'm fighting."
She felt the look he was bending upon her, and glowed and colored under
it, but did not dare to turn her eyes to meet it. Said he: "Why fight
it? Why not be happy?"
"Ah, but that's just it," cried she. "I shouldn't be happy. And I
should make you miserable. The idea of a career--the idea that's
rooted deep in me and can't ever be got out, Donald; it would torment
me. You couldn't kill it, no matter how much you loved me. I'd yield
for the time. Then, I'd go back--or, if I didn't, I'd be wretched and
make you wish you'd never seen me."
"I understand," said he. "I don't believe it, but I understand."
"You think I'm deceiving myself, because you saw me wasting my life,
playing the idler and the fool, pretending I was working toward a
career when I was really making myself fit for nothing but to be
Stanley Baird's mistress."
"And you're still deceiving yourself. You won't see the truth."
"No matter," said she. "I must go on and make a career--some kind of a
career."
"At what?"
"At grand opera."
"How'll you get the money?"
"Of Stanley, if necessary. That's why I asked his address. I shan't
ask for much. He'll not refuse."
"A few minutes ago you were talking of self-respect."
"As something I hoped to get. It comes with independence. I'll pay
any price to get it."
"Any price?" said he, and never before had she seen his self-control in
danger.
"I shan't ask Stanley until my other plans have failed."
"What other plans?"
"I am going to ask Mrs. Belloc for the money. She could afford to
give--to lend--the little I'd want. I'm going to ask her in such a way
that it will be as hard as possible for her to refuse. That isn't
ladylike, but--I've dropped out of the lady class."
"And if she refuses?"
"Then I'll go one after another to several very rich men I know, and
ask them as a business proposition."
"Go in person," advised he with an undisguised sneer.
"I'll raise no false hopes in them," she said. "If they choose to
delude themselves, I'll not go out of my way to undeceive them--until I
have to."
"So THIS is Mildred Gower?"
"You made that remark before."
"Really?"
"When Stanley showed you a certain photograph of me."
"I remember. This is the same woman."
"It's me," laughed she. "The real me. You'd not care to be married to
her?"
"No," said he. Then, after a brief silence: "Yet, curiously, it was
that woman with whom I fell in love. No, not exactly in love, for I've
been thinking about what you said as to the difference between love in
posse and love in esse, to put it scientifically--between love as a
prospect and love as a reality."
"And I was right," said she. "It explains why marriages go to pieces
and affairs come to grief. Those lovers mistook love's promise to come
for fulfillment. Love doesn't die. It simply fails to come--doesn't
redeem its promise."
"That's the way it might be with us," said he. "That's the way it would
be with us," rejoined she.
He did not answer. When they spoke again it was of indifferent
matters. An hour and a half after they started, they were at Mrs.
Belloc's again. She asked him to have tea in the restaurant next door.
He declined. He went up the steps with her, said:
"Well, I wish you luck. Moldini is the best teacher in America."
"How did you know Moldini was to teach me?" exclaimed she.