"I can't do it. And I'd not ask you if I weren't sure. I'll explain
when I see you."
"There's an especial reason why I want you here," urged he.
"And there's a more especial reason why I want you here."
"And there's an even more especial reason why I _must_ see you here,"
insisted he. "It's very unsatisfactory, talking over the telephone,
with people probably listening all along the wire. I'll come
to-morrow--or late this afternoon. But you come here first."
"No--really, I mustn't," she declared. "Don't you trust me? Don't you
know I'd not ask it, if it weren't perfectly--all right?"
"It isn't that, but-- I can't talk about it.... I'll come." And from
his tone she knew he had been decided by the fear that she'd think him
afraid. And then she realized that she had made her remark because she
counted on its appeal to his vanity--and the thought acted upon her
enthusiasm not unlike a douche.
*XXVIII*
She was on the drive-front porch with Lizzie, making plausible pretense
of rearranging the boxed evergreens. She heard the carriage turn in at
the gates, though they were nearly a quarter of a mile from the house.
As the horses rounded the bend she looked. But she waited on Lizzie,
who was not slow to cry out with delighted surprise, "Why, there's Mr.
Gallatin!"
Courtney said, "Do run in and see that the sitting room's straight."
Thus, she was alone when he descended. She saw him through a mist and
the hand she gave him was cold, was trembling. In the doorway, she said
hastily in an undertone: "Helen and Winchie are at Wenona--Richard at
the laboratory. You've stopped unexpectedly on your way south--for an
hour or two."
"I understand," said he. "I can't trust myself to look at you. My
love! My love!"
She flashed up at him a glance radiant with her florid fancies of
anticipation. "Come into the house," she contrived to say in an
ordinary tone.
As they went along the hall, side by side and talking for effect on
possible listeners, she saw that he had dressed as carefully as a
bridegroom. No more carefully than she had dressed, so far as she
dared; still, it struck her as amusing--as suggestive of hollowness.
And the voice which, as she heard it in fancy during those weeks of
waiting, had been so moving, so magical--what a commonplace voice it
was, and how very like affectation its Eastern intonations sounded.
"That nasty remark of Richard's!" she thought. "How weak of me to let
such a thing affect me." They entered the sitting room; he quickly
closed the door, caught her hands, looked at her from head to foot.
"Courtney!" he murmured. "I love you! I love you!"
She thrilled, lifted her eyes--dropped them. A chill stole over her.
She had to resist an impulse to draw her hands away. He looked really
handsome, was outwardly all her imagination had been picturing--and
more. Yet-- What was the matter? What was lacking? Why could she see
only the weakness and coarseness--the qualities that had stood out the
night he was drunk and the next afternoon when she was battling against
his vanity and jealousy? "It's my nerves," she decided. "I'm under a
greater strain than I realize." When he kissed her, she turned her head
so that his lips touched her cheek. And immediately she released her
hands. "We must be careful," she apologized.
"Why? You're free."
"Yes--but--" She paused.
"Why do you act so strange--so distant?"
"I don't know," she confessed. She felt ashamed of herself that she was
visiting on him the consequences of her own folly in having let her
imagination overleap all the bounds of probability in forecast. "I
don't know," she repeated. "Nerves, I suppose. Or, perhaps it's a bad
cold. I've felt one coming on all day. This morning I forgot to close
the----"
"Aren't you glad to see me?"
"Yes--yes, indeed," she protested. "Let's sit down."
She took a chair near the table. He was thus compelled to the sofa,
several feet away. "We ought to have met where we first arranged," said
he, constrained, embarrassed.
"I have to be careful. You forget Winchie."
An uncomfortable silence, then he: "You've been free thirty-nine days.
Yet you have not written me."
"I explained to you----"
"Didn't you feel like writing?"
"Of course. But----"
"But--what?"
"I wanted to be independent as well as free."