The lady principal of the school near Paddington had too high an
opinion of her distinguished and influential friend, Mr. Wilton, to
refuse a teacher who was so warmly recommended by him, more especially
as her junior mistress had left her most inconveniently in the middle
of term; so Katharine found herself installed there, about three weeks
before the Easter holidays, with a class of thirty children in her
sole charge. The teaching was only elementary, but there was plenty to
be done; and she soon found that, although she was ostensibly only
wanted in the mornings, she had to spend most of her afternoons also
in correcting exercises. But the work interested her, and she had no
difficulty in managing the children,--a fact which surprised her as
much as it did Mrs. Downing, who had expected very little from her
youthful looking teacher, in spite of her recommendation by Mr.
Wilton. Mrs. Downing was a well-dressed little woman, with charming
manners and an unbounded belief in herself. By resolutely playing on
the weaknesses of others, she concealed her own shallowness of mind;
and she made up for her lack of brains by contriving to have clever
people always about her. She had chatted herself into a fashionable
and paying connection in that part of Bayswater which calls itself
Hyde Park; and if she employed tact and dissimulation in order to
entrap the mothers of the neighbourhood, she was, to do her justice,
genuine in her love of their children. Katharine would have found it
difficult to like such a woman, had not a two months' sojourn with
working gentlewomen taught her to tolerate weaknesses which would
formerly have excited her contempt; and she endured her smiles and her
blandishments with a stoicism that arose from a knowledge of their
harmlessness. But Mrs. Downing remained in ignorance of the fact that
her youngest teacher, with the serious face and the childish manner,
was able to see right through her; and the impenetrability which saved
her from feeling a snub, also spared her the knowledge that Katharine
was laughing at her.
One morning, about a week after she had begun her work as junior
teacher, Katharine was interrupted in the middle of her first lesson
by the precipitate entrance of the lady principal.
"My dear Miss Austen," she began effusively, and then paused suddenly;
for there was something about Katharine, in spite of her youthful
look, which warned intruders that she was not to be interrupted so
lightly as the other teachers. On this occasion she finished
explaining to the children that saying Mary Howard was "_in_ the
second piano" did not accurately express the fact that Mary Howard was
practising in the second music-room; and then turned to see who had
come in.
"My dear Miss Austen," began Mrs. Downing again, "so good of you to
look after their English; they are apt to be so careless! I am always
telling them of it myself, am I not, dear children? Ah, Carry, what an
exquisite rose; such colouring; beautiful, beautiful! For me? Thanks,
my sweet child; that is so dear of you! My dear Miss Austen, you are
so obliging always, and my literature lecturer has suddenly
disappointed me, and the first class will have nothing to do in the
next hour. So tiresome of Mr. Fletcher! His wife is ill, and he is
such a good husband,--quite a model! So I have set them an essay; I
cannot _bear_ to have the ordinary work interrupted; and would you be
so good as to leave the door open between the two rooms, and give them
a little, just a little supervision? That is so dear of you; it has
taken a load off my mind. Dear children, listen with all your might to
everything Miss Austen has to say, and you will soon be so clever and
so wise--I beg your pardon, Miss Austen?"
"Isn't it rather a pity for them to miss their lecture altogether?"
said Katharine, in the first breathing space. "I mean, I could give
them one if you liked, on something else. My class is being drilled in
the next hour, and I have nothing particular to do."
"But I should be charmed, delighted; nothing could be more opportune!
My dear Miss Austen, I have found a treasure in you. Children, you
must make the most of your teacher while she is with you, for I shall
have to take her away from you, quite soon! Miss Austen, I shall come
and listen to your lecture myself. I will go and prepare the girls--"
"I think, perhaps, something quite different would be best," said
Katharine, detaining her with difficulty. "Would you like it to be on
Gothic architecture?"
Mrs. Downing did not know the difference between a pinnacle and a
buttress, but she hastened to say she would like Gothic architecture
better than anything else in the world, and had, in fact, been on the
point of suggesting it herself; after which, she went to interrupt the
first class also, and Katharine devoted her energies to collecting the
wandering attention of her own pupils.
At the end of her lecture the lady principal hastened up to her.
"How extremely interesting, to be sure! I had no idea those vaults,
and pillars, and things, were so beautiful before. Where did you find
out all that? I should like to learn it up myself in the holidays, and
give a course of lessons on it to the first class next term."
Katharine tried not to smile.
"I have been learning it all my life, from my father. I don't think I
know any textbooks; it would be difficult to read it up in a hurry, I
should think." But the lady principal never allowed herself to be
thwarted, when she had a fresh idea. Besides, Gothic architecture was
quite new, and would be sure to take in the neighbourhood.
"Then you must give a course yourself to the whole school, my dear
Miss Austen," she exclaimed. "I insist upon it; and we will begin the
first Wednesday of next term."
Anything that promised an addition to her salary was sure to be
agreeable to Katharine, and she was only too pleased to agree. But,
meanwhile, her finances were in a deplorable condition. She found
herself with nothing but the change out of half a sovereign, about ten
days before the end of the term; and although she could easily have
asked Miss Jennings to give her credit until she received her salary,
she had all a woman's hyper-sensitiveness of conscience, and all her
disregard of the importance of food as well; and she resolutely set to
work to starve herself during those ten days. Fortunately, she was
constitutionally strong, and she never reached the stage of privation
when food becomes distasteful; but there was little consolation for
her in the fact that she remained healthily hungry all the time, and
had to run past the pastry-cooks' shops to escape their seductive
display. Long walks at supper time did not compensate for a meal that
was satisfying, if it was not very tempting; and the irony of it all
was forced upon her with a somewhat grim significance by something
that occurred, when she came up to bed one evening, tired out and
dispirited. She noticed that the girls stopped talking directly she
entered the room; but this would not have aroused her suspicions, if
Phyllis Hyam had not made a point of conversing vigorously with her
through the curtains, and being more brusque than usual when the
others tried to interrupt her.
"Good old Phyllis," reflected Katharine. "They have evidently been
abusing me. I wonder what I have done!"
Phyllis enlightened her somewhat unwillingly, the next morning, when
the others had gone down to breakfast.
"Don't bother about them; _I_ wouldn't. Mean cats! It's jealousy, of
course. Fact is, Polly saw you in a hansom with a man, some time back;
she came home full of it. Said you were no better than the rest of us,
after all. I said you never pretended to be; it was our own look out,
if we chose to think so. Besides, it was most likely your brother, I
said. Polly said it wasn't; you looked so happy, and he was smiling at
you."
"Conclusive evidence," murmured Katharine, with her mouth full of
hair-pins. "Did she describe the gentleman in question? It might be
useful for future identification."
"Oh, yes, she did! Said he was rather like a corpse with a black
beard; had a flavour of dead loves about him, I think she said; but I
don't quite know what she was driving at. And I'm sure I don't care."
"I do. It is most entertaining. Was that all they said?"
Phyllis hesitated, said she was not going to tell any more, and
finally told every detail.
"I said they were mean, despicable liars, especially Polly,
considering how much you have done for her! And I said that if ever I
had the chance--"
"But what did _they_ say?" interrupted Katharine.
"Oh, bother! what does it matter? They are a pack of mean sneaks. They
said you were never in to lunch now, or supper either; and Polly was
sure she had seen you walking with some one, only yesterday evening,
and that you went into a restaurant with him; and she declares you see
him every day, and that you are going all wrong. I said I should like
to kill her. And they all said you must have gone wrong, because you
are never in to supper now. I said I should like to kill them all for
telling such a false lie, whether it was true or not! It isn't their
business whether you choose to come in to supper or not, is it? And
then you came in, and-- Why, whatever is the joke now? Mercy me; I
thought you would be furious!"
For, of course, it was not to be supposed that she should know why
Katharine was rolling on her bed in a paroxysm of laughter.
But the holidays came at last, and she congratulated herself proudly
on not having given in once. She left school on the last day of the
term with a light heart; everything had made her laugh that morning,
from the children's jubilation at the coming holiday, to Mrs.
Downing's characteristic farewell. "Don't overwork in the holidays, my
dear Miss Austen," she had said, shaking Katharine warmly by both
hands. "You look quite worn out; I am afraid you take things a little
too seriously, do you not? When you have had _my_ experience in school
work, you will think nothing of a class like yours! Perhaps you do not
eat enough? Take my advice, and try maltine; it is an excellent tonic
for the appetite!" And Katharine walked out into the sunshine and the
warm air, with a feeling of joy at the thought of the cheque she was
to receive on the morrow. There was only one more day of privation for
her; and she called herself greedy for thinking about it, and laughed
at her own greediness, all in the same breath. She might easily have
humbled her pride and gone home to lunch like a rational being, now
that she saw her way to paying for it; but such a weakness as that
never entered her head for a moment, and she walked gaily on instead,
weaving a rosy dream of the feast she would have if her pocket were
full of money. But it was nearly empty, and she only found twopence
there when she put her hand in to feel; and she jingled the coppers
together, and laughed again, and hurried on a little faster. At Hyde
Park Corner a beggar pursued her with his studied tale of distress: he
had no home, he whined, and he had eaten nothing for days. "Just my
case," said Katharine cheerfully, and a spirit of recklessness
impelled her to drop the two pennies into his grimy palm, and then
hasten on as before.
"Well met," said a voice behind her. "But what a hurry you are in, to
be sure! Where are you off to, now?"
She looked round and saw Paul Wilton, smiling unaffectedly at her in a
way that recalled the old days at Ivingdon. Perhaps, the fine day had
influenced him too; certainly, he had not been starving for a
fortnight, nor would he have seen the humour of it, probably, if he
had. But these reflections did not occur to Katharine; it was enough
for her that he looked more pleased than usual, and that his manner
had lost its constraint.
"I am not going anywhere. The spring has got into my head, that's all;
and I felt obliged to walk. Besides, it is the first day of my first
holidays!" and she laughed out joyously.
"Yes? You look very jolly over it, any way. Have you lunched yet?"
"Yes,--I mean, no. I don't want any lunch to-day," she said hastily.
"Don't let us talk about lunch; it spoils it so."
"But, my dear child, I really must talk about it. I have had nothing
to eat since supper last night, and I am going to have some lunch now.
You've got to come along, too, so don't make any more objections. I'm
not a healthy young woman like you, and I can't eat my three courses
at breakfast, and then fast until it is time to spoil my digestion by
afternoon tea. Where shall we go? Suppose you stop chuckling for a
moment and make a suggestion."
"But I don't know any places, and I don't really want anything to
eat," protested Katharine. She would not have been so independent, if
she had been a little less hungry. "There's a confectioner's along
here, that always looks rather nice," she added, remembering one she
had often passed lately with a lingering look, at its attractive
contents.
"Nonsense! that's only a shop. Have you ever been in here?"
Katharine confessed that she had never lunched at a restaurant before;
and the savoury smell that greeted them as they entered reminded her
how very hungry she was, and drove away her last impulse to object.
"Never? Why, what has Ted been up to? Now, you have got to say what
you like; this is your merrymaking, you know, because it is the first
day of the holidays."
"Oh, but I can't; you must do all that, _please_. You don't know how
beautiful it is to be taken care of again."
"Is it?" They smiled at each other across the little table, and the
old understanding sprang up between them.
"You're looking very charming," he said, when he had given the waiter
his preliminary instructions. "You may abuse the food at your place as
much as you like, but it certainly seems to agree with you."
"I don't think," said Katharine carelessly, "that it has anything to
do with the food."
"Of course not; my mistake. No doubt it is natural charm triumphing
over difficulties. Try some of this, to begin with; bootlaces or
sardines?"
Katharine looked perplexed.
"What a delightful child you are," he laughed. "It's to give you an
appetite for the rest. I advise the bootlaces. Nonsense! you must do
as you are told, for a change. I am not one of your pupils. Besides,
it is the first day of the holidays."
And Katharine, who had no desire for a larger appetite than she
already possessed, ate the _hors d'oeuvre_ with a relish, and longed
for more, and wondered if she should ever attain to the extreme
culture of her companion, who was playing delicately with the sardine
on his plate.
"Don't you ever feel hungry?" she asked him. "It seems to add to your
isolation that you have none of the ordinary frailties of the flesh. I
really believe it would quite destroy my illusion of you, if I ever
caught you enjoying a penny bun!"
"You may preserve the illusion, if you like, and remember that I am
not a woman. It is only women who-- Well, what is it now, child?"
"Do explain this," she begged him, with a comical expression of
dismay. "Why is it red?"
"I should say because, fundamentally, it is red mullet. It would never
occur to me to inquire more deeply into it; but the rest is probably
accounted for by the carte, if you understand French. Don't you think
you had better approach it, fasting and with faith?"
"Go on about your appetite, please; it is so awfully entertaining,"
resumed Katharine. "I believe, if you found yourself really hungry one
day, force of habit would still make you eat your lunch as though you
didn't want it a bit. Now, wouldn't it?"
"My dear Miss Katharine, you have yet to learn that hunger does not
give you a desire for more food, but merely imparts an element of
pleasure to it. Go on with your fish, or else the entrée will catch
you up."
"I am glad," said Katharine, in the interval between the courses,
"that I'm not a superior person like you. It must be so lonely, isn't
it?"
"What wine will you drink? White or red?" asked Paul severely.
"Living with you," continued Katharine, leaning back and looking
mischievously at what was visible of him over the wine list, "must be
exactly like living with Providence."
"Number five," said Paul to the waiter, laying down the wine list.
Then he looked at her, and shook his head reprovingly.
"You see you don't live with me, do you?" he said drily.
"No," retorted Katharine hastily. "I live with sixty-three working
gentlewomen, and that is a very different matter."
"Very," he assented, looking so searchingly at her that she found
herself beginning to blush. The arrival of the wine made a diversion.
"Oh," said Katharine, "I am quite sure I can't drink any champagne."
"If you had not been so occupied in firing off epigrams, you might
have had some choice in the matter. As it is, you have got to do as
you are told."
He filled her glass, and she felt that it was very pleasant to do as
she was told by him; and her eyes glistened as they met his over the
brimming glasses.
"I am so happy to-day," she felt obliged to tell him.
"That's right. Because it is the first day of the holidays?"
"Because you are so nice to me, I think," she replied softly; and then
was afraid lest she had said too much. But he nodded, and seemed to
understand; and she dropped her eyes suddenly and began crumbling her
bread.
"What makes you so nice to me, I wonder," she continued in the same
tone. This time he became matter-of-fact.
"The natural order of the universe, I suppose. Man was created to look
after woman, and woman to look after man; don't you think so?"
She understood him well enough, by now, to know when to take her tone
from him.
"At all events, it saves Providence a lot of trouble," she said; and
they laughed together.
Their lunch was a success; and Paul smiled at her woe-begone face when
the black coffee had been brought, and she was beginning slowly to
remember that there was still such a place as number ten, Queen's
Crescent, and that it actually existed in the same metropolis as the
one that contained this superb restaurant.
"It is nearly over, and it has been so beautiful," she sighed.
"Nonsense! it has only just begun. It isn't time to be dull yet; I'll
tell you when it is," said Paul briskly; and he called for a daily
paper.
"What do you mean?" gasped Katharine, opening her eyes wide in
anticipation of new joys to come.
"We're going to a matinee, of course. Let's see,--have you any
choice?"
"A theatre? Oh!" cried Katharine. Then she reddened a little. "You
won't laugh if I tell you something?"
"Tell away, you most childish of children!"
"I've never been to a theatre before, either."
They looked at the paper together, and laughed one another's
suggestions to scorn, and then found they had only just time to get to
the theatre before it began. And she sat through the three acts with
her hand lying in his; and to her it was a perfect ending to the most
perfect day in her life. He took her home afterwards, and left her at
the corner of the street.
"I won't come to the door; better not, perhaps," he said, and his
words sent a sudden feeling of chill through her. They seemed to have
fallen back into the conventional attitude again, the most appropriate
one, probably, for Edgware Road, but none the less depressing on that
account.
"You are not going to be sad, now?" he added, half guessing her
thoughts. She looked up in his face and made an effort to be bright.
"It has been beautiful all the time," she said. "I never knew anything
could be so beautiful before."
"Ah," he said, smiling back; "it is the first day of your first
holidays, you see. We will do it again some day." But she knew as he
spoke that they never could do it again.
She saw him occasionally during the Easter holidays. He sent for her
once about a pupil he had managed to procure her, and once about some
drawing-room lectures he tried to arrange for her, and which fell
through. But on both these occasions he was in his silent mood, and
she came away infected by his dulness. Then she met him one day in the
neighbourhood of Queen's Crescent, and they had a few minutes
conversation in the noise and bustle of the street, that left her far
happier than she had been after a tête-à-tête in his chambers.
She went home for a few days at the end of her holidays, but her visit
was not altogether a success. It was a shock to her to find that home
was no longer the same now that she had once left it; and she did not
quite realise that the change was in herself as much as in those she
had left behind her. Her father had grown accustomed to living without
her, and it hurt her pride to find that she was no longer
indispensable to him. Her old occupations seemed gone, and there was
no time to substitute new ones; she told herself bitterly that she had
no place in her own home, and that she had burnt her ships when she
went out to make herself a new place in the world. Ivingdon seemed
narrower in its sympathies and duller than ever; she wondered how
people could go on living with so few ideas in their minds, and so few
topics of conversation; even the Rector irritated her by his want of
interest in her experiences and by his utter absorption in his own
concerns. Miss Esther added to her feeling of strangeness by treating
her with elaborate consideration; she would have given anything to be
scolded instead, for being profane, or for lying on the hearthrug. But
they persisted in regarding her as a child no longer; and she felt
graver and more responsible at home, than she had done all the time
she was working for her living in London.
On the whole, she was glad when school began again; and she grew much
happier when she found herself once more engrossed in the term's work,
which had now increased very materially, owing to her own efforts as
well as to those of Paul. Of him, she only had occasional glimpses
during the next few weeks; but they were enough to keep their
friendship warm, and she soon found herself scribbling little notes to
him, when she had anything to tell,--generally about some small
success of hers which she felt obliged to confide to some one, and
liked best of all to confide to him. Sometimes he did not answer them;
and she sighed, and took the hint to write no more for a time. And
sometimes he wrote back one of his ceremonious replies, which she had
learnt to welcome as the most characteristic thing he could have sent
her; for, in his letters, Paul never lost his formality. It was a very
satisfactory friendship on both sides, with enough familiarity to give
it warmth, and not enough to make it disquieting. But it received an
unexpected check towards the middle of June, through an incident that
was slight enough in itself, though sufficient to set both of them
thinking. And to stop and think in the course of a friendship,
especially when it is between a man and a woman, is generally the
forerunner of a misunderstanding.
It was the first hot weather that year. May had been disappointingly
cold and wet, after the promise of the month before, but June came in
with a burst of sunshine that lasted long enough to justify the papers
in talking about the drought. On one of the first fine days, Paul was
lazily smoking in his arm-chair after a late breakfast, when a knock
at his outer door roused him unpleasantly from a reverie that had
threatened to become a nap; and he rose slowly to his feet with
something like a muttered imprecation. Then he remembered that he had
left the door open for the sake of the draught, and he shouted a brief
"Come in," and sank back again into his chair. A light step crossed
the threshold, and paused close behind him.
"Who's there?" asked Paul, without moving.
"Well, you _are_ cross. And on a morning like this, too!"
Paul got up again, with rather more than his usual show of energy, and
turned and stared at his visitor.
"Really, Katharine," he said, with a slowly dawning smile of
amusement.
"Oh, I know all that," exclaimed Katharine, with an impatient gesture.
"But the sun was shining, and I had to come, and you'll have to put up
with it."
Paul looked as though he should have no difficulty in putting up with
it; and he went outside, and sported his oak.
"Won't you sit down, and tell me why you have come?" he suggested,
when he came back again. Katharine dropped into a chair, and laughed.
"How can you ask? Why, it is my half-term holiday; and the sun's
shining. Look!"
"I believe it is, yes," he said, glancing towards the gently flapping
blind. "Has that got anything to do with it?"
"Of course it has. I believe, I do believe you never would have known
it was a fine day at all, if I had not come to see you!"
"I can hardly believe that you did come to see me for the purpose of
telling me it was a fine day," said Paul.
Katharine leaned over the back of her chair, and nodded at him.
"Guess why I did come," she said. He shook his head lazily. She
imparted the rest of her news in little instalments, to give it more
emphasis. "It's my half-term holiday," she said again, and paused to
watch the effect of her words.
"I think I heard you say that before," he observed.
"And I'm going into the country for the whole day."
"Yes?" said Paul, who did not seem impressed.
"And I want you to come too. There! don't you think it was worth a
visit?" Her laugh rang out, and filled the little room. Paul was
stroking his beard reflectively, but he did not seem vexed.
"Really, Katharine," he said once more.
"Oh, now, don't be musty," she pleaded, resting her chin on her hands.
"I just want to do something jolly to-day; and I've never asked you
anything before, have I? Do, _please_, Mr. Wilton. I won't bother you
again for ever so long; I promise you I won't."
"Are you aware," said Paul, frowning, "that it is not customary to
come and visit a man in his chambers in this uninvited manner?"
"You know quite well," retorted Katharine, "that nothing ever matters,
if I do it."
"Of course I know that you are beyond the taint of scandal, or the--"
She started up impatiently, and came over to the side of his
arm-chair.
"Don't begin to be sarcastic. I never can think of the word I want,
when you get sarcastic. I am not beyond anything, and I am certainly
not above asking you a favour. Now, if you were to stop being superior
for a few minutes--"
"And if you were to stop standing on one leg, and swinging the other
about in that juvenile manner, a catastrophe might be--"
She seized a cushion and tried to smother him with it; but he was too
quick for her, and the cushion went spinning to the other end of the
room, and she found herself pulled on to his knee.
"You dreadful child! It is too hot, and I am too old for romping in
this fashion," he observed lazily.
"Are you coming?" she asked abruptly. She was playing with his watch
chain, and he did not quite know what to make of her face.
"Do you want me to?" he asked gently.
"Of course I do," she said, in a swift little whisper; and her fingers
strayed up to his scarf pin, and touched his beard.
"I am being dreadfully improper," she said.
"You are being very nice," he replied, and weakly kissed her fingers.
She did not move, and he gave her a little shake.
"What a solemn child you are," he complained. "It is impossible to
play with you, because you always take one so seriously."
"I know," said Katharine, rousing herself and looking penitent. "I am
so sorry! I am made that way, I think. It used to annoy Ted. I think
it is because I never had any fun at home, or any one to play with,
except Ted. And then I began to earn my living, and so I never had
time to be frivolous at all. I suppose I am too old to begin, now."
"Much too old," smiled Paul.
A knock came at the outer door. Paul put her away from him almost
roughly, and glanced with a disturbed look round the room.
"You had better stay here," he said shortly, "and keep quiet till I
come back."
"Who is it?" asked Katharine, in some bewilderment.
"I don't know. You don't understand," was all he said; and he went out
and spoke for a few minutes to a man on the landing.
"It was about a brief," he said on his return. He still frowned a
little, and she felt, regretfully, that his genial mood had fled.
"Was that all? Wouldn't he come in?" she asked.
Paul looked at her incredulously.
"It wasn't likely that I should ask him," he said, turning his back to
her, and rummaging among the papers on his desk. The colour came into
her face, and she was conscious of having said something tactless,
without exactly knowing what.
"Shall I go away again?" she asked slowly. The joy seemed suddenly to
have been taken out of her half-term holiday.
"You see, it is not for myself that I mind," he tried to explain
quietly; "but if you were to be seen in here alone, it would do for
your reputation at once, don't you see?"
Katharine looked as though she did not see.
"But, surely, there is no harm in my coming here?" she protested.
"Of course not; no harm at all. It isn't that," said Paul hastily.
"Then," said Katharine, "if there is no harm in it, why should I not
come? It is all rubbish, isn't it? I won't come any more if it bothers
you; but that is another matter."
"My dear child, do be reasonable! It is not a question of my feelings
at all. I like you to come, but I don't want other people to know that
you do, because of what they might say. It is for your sake entirely
that I wish you to be careful. That is why I don't come to see you at
your place. Do you see now?"
Katharine shook her head.
"It is either wrong, or it isn't wrong," she said obstinately. "I
never dreamed that there could be any harm in my coming to see you, or
I should not have come. And it was so pleasant, and you have always
been so nice to me. Why did you not tell me before? I don't see how it
can be wrong, and yet it can't be right, if I have got to pretend to
other people that I don't come. I hate hiding things; I don't like the
feel of it. I wish I could understand what you mean."
"It is quite easy to understand," said Paul, beginning to realise that
his case, as stated baldly by Katharine, was a very lame one. "It is
not wrong, as far as you and I are concerned; but it is a hell of a
world, and people will talk."
It was strong language for him to use; and she felt again that it was
her stupidity that was annoying him. She sighed, and her voice
trembled a little.
"I don't see what it has to do with other people at all. It is quite
enough for me, if you like me to come; and as for my reputation, it
seems to exist solely for the sake of the other people, so they may
as well say what they like about it. _I_ don't care. It is horrible of
you to suggest such a lot of horrible ideas. According to you, I ought
to be feeling ashamed of myself; but-- I don't."
"Of course you don't," said Paul, smiling in spite of himself; and he
put his hand out and drew her towards him. She was only a child, he
told himself, and he was old enough to be her father.
"My dear little puritan," he added softly, "you were never made to
live in the world as it is. If all women were like you, good heavens!
there wouldn't be any sin left."
"And I believe you would be sorry for it, wouldn't you?" said
Katharine suddenly. But when, instead of contradicting her, he tried
to make her explain her meaning, she only shook her head resolutely.
"I don't think I could; I hardly know myself. It was only something
that came into my head at the moment. It was something horrid; don't
let us talk about it any more. Are you coming out with me, or not? Ah,
I know you are not coming, now!"
She was swift to notice the least change in his expression, and it had
grown very dark in the last ten minutes. He held her out at arms'
length, by her two elbows, and smiled rather uncomfortably.
"I think I won't to-day, dear. Another time, eh? This brief must be
looked to at once; and I have some other work, too. Go and enjoy your
holiday, without me for a discordant element."
Katharine flushed up hotly, and loosed herself from his grasp. "I
don't mind your not coming," she said, looking steadily on the ground,
"but I don't think you need bother to invent excuses for _me_."
Paul shrugged his shoulders with an indifference that maddened her.
"All right; I won't, then. Go and find some one else for a companion,
and don't be a young silly. Can't Ted get off for to-day?"
"You have never said so many horrid things to me before," cried
Katharine passionately.
"You have never been so difficult to please before," observed Paul
coolly. "Besides, I was under the impression that I was making rather
a good suggestion."
"You always drag up Ted when you are being particularly unkind! If I
had wanted to go out with Ted, I shouldn't have come to you first."
Paul began to fear a scene; and he had more than a man's horror of
scenes. But he could not help seeing the tears in her eyes as she
walked away to the door, and he caught her up just as she was opening
it.
"Aren't you going to say good-bye? It may be some time before I see
you again." He determined, as he spoke, that it should certainly be a
very long time before he saw her again. But she disarmed him by
turning round swiftly without a trace of her anger left.
"Oh, why must it be some time? You don't mean it, do you? Say you
don't mean it, Mr. Wilton," she implored.
"No, no; I was only joking," he said reassuringly. "Quite soon, of
course." And he dropped a kiss on the little pink ear that was nearest
to him. But when he saw the look on her face, and the quick way in
which her breath was coming and going, he blamed himself for his
indiscretion, and pushed her playfully outside the door.
When Phyllis Hyam came home from the office, that evening, she found
Katharine on the floor of her cubicle, mending stockings; while the
rest of her wardrobe occupied all the available space to be seen.
Katharine never did things by halves, and she very rarely had the
impulse to mend her clothes.
"Hullo! do you mean to say you are back already?" cried Phyllis,
tripping clumsily over the dresses on the floor.
"That hardly demands an answer, does it?" said Katharine, without
looking up. She threaded her needle, and added more graciously, "I
didn't go, after all."
"Oh," said Phyllis wonderingly. "I'm sorry."
"You needn't bother, thanks. I didn't want to go. I stayed at home
instead, and mended my clothes; they seemed to want it, rather. I
shall be quite respectable, now."
"Oh!" said Phyllis again. "I should have left it for a wet day, I
think."
"Perhaps your work allows you to select your holidays according to the
weather. Mine doesn't," said Katharine sarcastically.
Phyllis cleared the chair, and sat down upon it.
"You've been crying," she said, with the bluntness that estranged all
her friends in time. Katharine never minded it; it rather appealed to
her love of truth than otherwise.
"Oh, yes! I was disappointed, that's all. There was nothing really to
cry about. I don't know why I did. Don't sit there and stare,
Phyllis; I know I have made a sight of myself."
"No, you haven't. Poor old dear!" said Phyllis, with ill-timed
affection. "I should like to tell him what I think of him, I know!"
she added emphatically.
"What are you muttering about?" asked Katharine.
"Oh, nothing," said Phyllis. "Have you had any tea?"
"I don't want any tea, thank you. I wish you wouldn't bother. Go down
and have your own."
"Guess I shall bring it up here instead, and then we can talk," said
Phyllis. In about ten minutes she returned, very much out of breath,
with a large tray.
Katharine looked up and frowned. "I said I didn't want any," she said
crossly. However, she added that she believed there was some
shortbread on the book-case, which Phyllis at once annexed; and her
temper began slowly to improve.
"Phyllis," she asked abruptly, after a long pause, "what do you think
of men?"
"That they are luxuries," returned Phyllis, without hesitation. "If
you've nothing to do all day but to play about, you can afford to
have a man or two around you; but if you're busy, you can't do with
them, anyhow."
"Why not?" demanded Katharine. "Don't you think they help one along,
rather?"
"Not a bit of it! First, they draw you on, because you seem to hold
off; and then, when you begin to warm up, they come down with a
quencher, and you feel you've been a sight too bold. And all that kind
of thing is distracting; and it affects your work after a time."
"But surely," said Katharine, "a girl can have a man for a friend
without going through all that!"
"Don't believe in it; never did; it doesn't work."
"I think it does, sometimes," observed Katharine. "Of course it
depends on the girl."
"Entirely," said Phyllis cheerfully. "The man would always spoil it,
if he could--without being found out."
Katharine leaned back on the pillow, with her arms behind her head,
and her eyes fixed on the ceiling.
"That's just it," she said thoughtfully; "men are so much more
conventional than women. I am glad I am not a man, after all. There
is no need for a woman to be conventional, is there? She isn't afraid
of being suspected, all the time. I'm certain conventionality was made
for man, and not man for conventionality, and that woman never had a
hand in it at all."
"I don't know about that, though it sounds very fine," said Phyllis.
"But of course men have to be more conventional than we are. It helps
them to make some show of respectability, I guess."
"It is very horrible, if one analyses it," murmured Katharine.
"According to that, the man who is openly bad is preferable to the man
who is conventionally good. Of course Paul is not bad at all; but, oh!
I do wish I didn't see through people, when they try to pretend
things,--it always annoys them."
"Eh?" said Phyllis, looking up. "Your tea is getting cold."
"Never mind about the tea! Tell me, Phyllis, do you think any woman
can attract any man, if she likes?"
"Of course she can, if she is not in love with him."
Katharine winced, and brought her eyes down to look at her unconscious
friend, who was still munching shortbread with an expression of
complete contentment on her face.
"I mean if she _is_ in love with him, very much in love with him."
"Can't say; never was, myself. But I don't believe you can do
anything, if you've got it badly; you have to let yourself go, and
hope for the best."
"I don't believe you know any more about it than I do, Phyllis. I'll
tell you what it is that is attractive to a man in a woman: it is her
imperfections. He likes her to be jealous, and vain, and full of small
deceptions. He hates her to be tolerant, and large-minded, and
truthful; above all, he hates her to be truthful. I don't know why it
is so, but it is."
"It is because she isn't too mighty big to worship him, then; nor cute
enough to see through him," said Phyllis.
"If you can see through a man, you should never fall in love with
him," added Katharine.
"Oh, I don't know!" said Phyllis. "You can always pretend not to see;
they never know."
"A nice man does," said Katharine, smiling for the first time. The tea
had made her feel more charitable; and she took up her pen, and wrote
to her mother's connections, the Keeleys, who did not know she was in
town, to ask them when she could call and see them.
She felt the need of knowing some one, now that she had made up her
mind not to know Paul any more. For he had taught her the desire for
companionship, and she shrank from being left entirely friendless.