“I gave you some advice the other day, my boy,” he continued. “Bear it
in mind. The woman is helpless. I confess I don't see what on earth she
can do. For she is a highly impractical little thing She has very little
idea of the value of money. I offered more than I had any business
to--offered to send her back to Europe and help her along with her
studies. It seemed the only way to reach her, don't you know--the
line of her ambition, and therefore her weakest point. I used all the
familiar arguments. And God knows most of them are true enough--that
private morality is of no consequence in an operatic career, that
a woman need conform to suburban standards only if she is seeking a
suburban success. I pointed out notorious episodes in the lives of great
women performers whom we all admire, women of unquestioned position. But
do you know, my boy, not one of these arguments appeared to reach her at
all. She is to me, I must say, an extraordinary contradiction. Here she
is, deserted and destitute on the China Coast, where a woman can not
travel alone for a day without advertising herself as a marketable
commodity; and yet, so far as I can see, she is, in a sense, a good
woman. Really, it was n't until I pointed out the wreckage she was
making of your life, and the service she could do you by accepting my
money and getting away from you, that she would so much as listen to
me--”
He looked up at me, and his voice trailed off into silence.
But I did nothing, except to say, in a voice that I knew to be my own
because he was no longer speaking and there was certainly no other
person in the room--
“So you talked of me!”
He bowed.
“You are frank, Sir Robert.”
He waved his hand. “Why not?” Then he went on. “The most puzzling point
in her puzzling story is that part relating to the other man--the one
that brought her out here. She makes no effort to justify her actions,
as we expect a woman to do when she has gone wrong in the eyes of men.”
“Oh--so you asked her about that?”
“Yes.” He indulged in a wry, fleeting smile. “I brought up
everything--used all my logic, Eckhart. I was, like you, a fool to want
her at all with that crazy husband so close on her heels; but I did want
her, and I worked hard for a few hours.” He sighed. “Do you know, all
she has to say of the man with whom she traveled from New York clear to
Peking, is--' That was a dreadful mistake. I was n't the sort of woman
he thought me.' And when I spoke sympathetically of his cruelty in
deserting her, she quietly informed me that he did nothing of the
kind.... What do you say to that, my boy? _She left him!_”
He was quite warmed up to his story now. He even chuckled.
“What do you say to that, young man? This exceedingly attractive young
person, very nearly penniless, quite unhampered by practical experience,
turns the man off, refuses his money, and starts out to face life--in
Peking--alone and without so much as a plan of action! It is pitiful, of
course. It is tragic. But it does stir the fancy. Now, doesn't it?”
“I don't know,” I said slowly, “why I don't beat you to death.”
His face, I thought, grew even whiter. But his eyes met mine.
“I know why,” he replied deliberately. “Because a gentleman does not
commonly enter the room of another gentleman for any such unmannerly
purpose.”