Sutton, always debonair, came in gaily:
“Awfully sorry to be so late,” he said, gracefully saluting and
retaining her hand. “I suppose you’ll put me out bodily, as you did
before----” He checked his breezy loquacity as the lighted dining room
and table caught his eye.
“Oh, Lord! I didn’t know I was that late!” he exclaimed. “Forgive me,
Gilda, and let me come tomorrow----”
“No; stay, please.”
“But this is rotten of me----”
“Please stay. I hadn’t thought of your remaining to dinner, but I’d be
happy if you would.”
“You charitable girl!--you really don’t want me----”
“I _do_.”
He hesitated; he even had the grace to blush; then he disembarrassed
himself of hat and overcoat, ashamed of himself for doing it.
Gilda ran into her bath-room, selected her best towels, combed out her
silver brush, dusted the powder from the toilet table, and returned to
Sutton.
“I’m a beastly bore,” he said, “and you know it! Yet, now you propose
to curry-comb me and feed me. Oh, Gilda!”
Her heart was blithe as she danced away to the kitchen door:
“Oh, Freda, Mr. Sutton will dine with me. There’s enough, isn’t there?”
Freda proved adequate to the emergency; a place was ready at table for
Sutton when he reappeared.
There was a fragrant oyster stew, two chops and a baked potato apiece,
half an artichoke with wonderful dressing, a cherry tart divided,
camembert, coffee, cigarettes.
Sutton appeared to be enchanted. He had an easy way of seeming so, but
he really was, this time.
Gilda was happy; her appetite had returned, and between them they ate
everything.
She broke off a rose-bud and gave it to Sutton for his button-hole.
Then they took their cigarettes and coffee into the living room, and
sat down side by side on the wide sofa where Gilda had placed the row
of prim cushions in pleasant anticipation of such an event.
Sutton was in high spirits, very sensible to the girl’s beauty, very
much the opportunist in any such situation.
“Why did you eject me so suddenly the other evening?” he asked in his
gay, bantering way. “First you bowled me over, Gilda, then you threw me
out!”
She turned shy at that, offering no reply, and addressed herself to her
Minton coffee cup.
“Didn’t I behave properly?” he insisted, laughing. But he could extract
no comment from her, and her uncertain smile baffled him.
“Are you quite all right again?” he inquired. “You look so wonderfully
fit that I didn’t even ask you.”
She said, diffidently, that she was perfectly recovered; and, at his
request, suffered him to examine the nape of her neck.
“Amazing!” he exclaimed. “Have you heard from any of
them--Pockman--Sadoul?----”
“I saw Sadoul.”
“Really! When?”
“Today.”
“Oh. What did he have to say about that rather ghastly affair?”
“He said I really died.”
Sutton shrugged. He no longer believed it. “Death is death,” he
observed. “There is no remedy for death, and there never was----”
Something seemed to check him; he hesitated--“Not since Christ,
anyway,” he added.
“I _did_ die,” she said in a low voice.
Her tranquil finality silenced him for a moment. He took her empty
coffee cup and set it aside with his own.
“Gilda,” he said, “I’ve a lot of very friendly curiosity about you--no
use pretending I haven’t. Am I impertinent?”
She remained mute, not looking at him, her slender and very white
little hands clasped loosely in her lap.
He said: “The other evening you asked me to advise you in regard to
investments, didn’t you?”
She nodded.
“Well, then,” he went on, “don’t you think I’d better tell you
something about myself?”
“If you care to.”
“All right. I’m twenty-eight; I’m in the lumber business. That’s what
made me so late this evening--one of our men arrived unexpectedly from
up-state. I had to talk to him. We’re reforesting on a big scale--we’re
driven to do it. Everybody has got to come down to cases in our
business, now, because the end of the standing timber is in sight, and
there’ll be no more lumber unless we lumbermen begin to grow some. But
you’re not interested in that----”
“I might be. I don’t know anything about lumber.”
“It’s an interesting business, really--if you’ll let me tell you
sometime. But now, in regard to any advice from me--it being your money
and not mine--all I could say to you would be on old-fashioned lines:
buy for investment only; buy only what is absolutely safe.”
“Is that what you would do if it were your money?”
“I’d probably speculate,” he admitted with a grin.
“I’ll do it if you advise it.”
“I _don’t_! Good heavens! I shouldn’t want anything like that on my
conscience.... Anyway, I know nothing about your circumstances----”
She told him very frankly and simply how much money she had. He
pointed out that, even in spite of the income tax, safe investments in
conservative securities would give her an income adequate to the needs
and even the little luxuries required by any young girl living alone in
New York.
She nodded: “I’ll tell you a little more about myself. My father and
mother did not live together. I grew up in boarding schools, here and
in France. I never had seen my father. He wrote to me once a month. My
mother sometimes visited me.... Then war came. My father suddenly sent
for me and I went to London. That was the first time I ever saw him....
And the last.
“Troops were leaving; he was an officer.... I might have liked him....
But he went away.... Before he left, he made provision for me.... And
that is the money I now have.”
“What else happened?” asked Sutton gently.
“My father was killed in Asia.”
“I see....”
“Mother arrived in London.... There was legal trouble.... I wanted her
to have half, but my father’s solicitors would not permit it. I was
trying to devise a way to divide with her when the German airships came
over.... Mother was killed ... in Regent Street.... They found her
gold-mesh bag.... Nothing else.”
Sutton waited gravely. Gilda sat with head lowered, her clasped hands
lying loosely in her lap, her brooding gaze remote.
“What happened to you then?” he asked.
“I thought I ought to learn how to support myself in case the Germans
overran the world and ruined everybody.”
“It nearly came to that,” he remarked.
“Yes.... So I hastened to learn shorthand and typing. When I was
fairly efficient, there happened to be a demand in Paris for English
stenographers who understood French.... So I took a position they
offered with an English firm of stenographers in the rue Colchas.” ...
She sat very still for a few moments, then, averting her head: “--That
is all, Mr. Sutton.”
Of course it was not all; she had not spoken of Sadoul nor of the
period in her life wherein he had been a factor. However, it was,
evidently, all she cared to tell him about herself.
He glanced sideways at her; she sat very still, gazing straight
in front of her. The pretty, childish contours seemed altered,
somehow--less youthful, sharper where shadow fell, accenting a profile
almost nobly traced. He watched her furtively, curiously, interested in
the detached sadness of a face so young, in its pale preoccupation with
things beyond his ken.
The opportunist in him, too, had become subdued in the gravity of her
altered mood.
The world always accepts you as you present yourself. So Sutton now
found himself inclined to view Gilda Greenway more seriously than he
had ever expected to. Usually he reserved for this sort of pretty girl
those gay, casual, amiable, irresponsible qualities usually expected of
a man by such girls.
She had not invited them, even at Derring’s. Apparently she did not
expect them.
Was she one of the impossible kind who supposed a man didn’t know the
difference?... Or--was there, possibly, not as much difference as
he naturally had supposed--meeting her sans façon at Derring’s--and
finding her so pliant in the end----
He had, of course, placed her, generally, but not at all definitely.
There seemed to be nothing specific about her--with her freshness and
youth and oddly winsome shyness.
Yet, there was Derring’s anything but exclusive party; and there was
Sadoul.... Certainly, he thought, there are all sorts in the world; and
of new kinds there is no ending.
He was first to break the long silence with a banality: “Some day,
Gilda, will you tell me more about yourself?”
She turned her head, faintly surprised: “No; I don’t think so.”
He took his snub with such unfeigned and flushed chagrin that she,
also, blushed.
“I didn’t mean it unkindly,” she murmured. “It sounds so. I’m sorry.”
Her concern was so candid, so unconsciously sweet, that he recovered
much too quickly. Such young men do. That’s the trouble with candour
and inexperience.
He told her, impulsively, how deeply interested in her he was becoming.
He took her passive little hands in his and told her again, with enough
emotion in his voice to charm and trouble her.
The emotion was quite genuine. It always is in young men. The only
trouble is that they have an unlimited capacity for it--if only the
girl involved be fair to look upon.
But now, in hopeful recollection of an episode altogether charming,
this young man was slightly surprised when Gilda’s supple body
stiffened, and her firm, cool hand removed his enterprising arm.
“Please,” she said under her breath, “--I had rather not.”
“You didn’t say that at Derring’s----”
Her lips tightened and she closed her eyes more tightly still, as
though chagrined at the remembrance.
“Are you really sorry, Gilda?”
“Yes.... I mean I don’t know whether I am.... I had rather you didn’t
kiss me--again----”
“I won’t, if you don’t wish it----”
“No.”
He took it amiably enough--even a trifle anxiously, afraid of offending
a girl who was beginning to pique his curiosity--that overwhelming
symptom of masculine egotism ever latent in young men.
“Of course,” he said gaily, “it was carnival time at Derring’s.... I
didn’t mistake you for a moment.... I really like you tremendously,
Gilda.... You are such a lovely thing, anyway--don’t be too severe with
me.”
“Not severe--with you.... No. It isn’t that.” ... She drew a deep
breath, smiled uneasily at him.
“I do like you.... I want to be friends.... Will you try always to
remember that?”
“Yes, you charming girl!----”
“--Because--you may not think so, sometimes.... I may do things you
will not understand.... It won’t be because I don’t--don’t like you.”
She rose; he stood up, too. She said slowly:
“I want you to go, now.... Will you still believe that I like you, very
much, if I--I ask you to say good-night to me?”
“Of course!... You’re the most winsome girl, Gilda--the most
delightful!--I _do_ care a lot for you----”
“Telephone me--soon.”
“Rather!” ... He had his coat on, now.... “I’ll call you tomorrow, if I
may.”
She nodded and opened the door for him. He wanted her hand again and
got it.
“You like me a little, don’t you, Gilda?”
Her tightly held hand began to tremble in his, and she loosened it with
a sudden nervous movement.
“I want you to go,” she whispered.
There was a strange, uncontrolled note in her voice--and he looked at
her green eyes in the demi-light.
“I’ll tell you--sometime,” she said breathlessly.... “I do care for
you.... We must help each other--not destroy----”
“What frightens you?”
“Please go, if you care for me at all!”
He stepped back in silence; the door closed smartly, and he heard
her bolt it. And, listening, he became aware of another sound in the
stillness--a murmur, broken, incoherent, as though inside the door the
girl were whispering to herself, and whimpering all alone.