The motor stopped. She had arrived at her house. The car door was opened
by H. R.
She started back. Then she looked at him curiously, almost
awe-strickenly, as though her wishes had taken on magical properties of
automatic fulfilment.
Was this the same remarkable person she had almost deified on the way
from Raquin's exhibition? What would he say? She prayed that he might
not spoil everything, by some inanity.
He held out his hand to help her alight. Then he spoke.
"It was time!" he said, and walked beside her--but a couple of inches
ahead. That was because, though he was an American husband-to-be, he
also was a man, a protector, a leader. Such men are cave-men minus the
club.
Grace at times was not a true Goodchild. This time she said nothing.
Frederick opened the door. His face expressed no sense of the
unusualness of the sight.
H. R., with the air of a host, led Grace into the drawing-room. He stood
beside her in the gorgeous Louis XV. room.
"Grace," he said, gently, "for twenty-nine days I've been the unhappiest
man in all New York. For five, the unhappiest in the entire world!"
"Will you kindly release my hand?" she asked. No sooner had the words
left her lips than she realized they were piffle. Then she began to
laugh. It was the first official acknowledgment that no social barriers
divided them.
"Suppose," she asked, with a humorously intended demureness, "that I
wished to use my handkerchief?"
H. R. with his disengaged hand took his own out of his pocket and held
it to her nose.
"Blow!" he said, tenderly.
"I don't want to," she retorted and tried to pull away her hand.
He replaced his handkerchief in his pocket.
"All over but the mailing-list," he said to her. "Sit down here; by me!"
Something within her stirred to revolt. Unfortunately, he did not
release her hand, but led her to the historic divan--part of the suite
for which Mr. Goodchild had paid eighteen thousand five hundred dollars
in the Sunday supplement. Marie Antoinette had been seated in that very
place when de Rohan brought the famous diamond necklace to show her.
(Same issue; third column, fourth page.)
"I think that for sheer, unadulterated impudence--" she began, without
any anger, because she was too busy trying to decide what she must do to
him to put an end to a situation that had become intolerable--at least
in its present shape.
"Grace, don't talk nonsense. Just let me look at you."
He held her at arm's-length and looked into her eyes. He saw that they
were blue and clear and steady and looked fearlessly at him--the stare
of a child who doesn't know why she should be afraid.
If they don't watch out that fearlessness becomes anything but childish
in New York.
He continued to stare steadily, unblinkingly, into them.
"I can't stand it! I can't stand it!" he said, hoarsely, and blinked his
eyes. Then he closed them--tight. Coward!
She had felt his keen eyes bore through her garments, through her flesh,
into her very soul of souls--a look that frightened until it warmed; and
after it warmed, it again frightened--in another way.
She saw a wonderfully well-shaped head and very clean-looking hair and a
very healthy-looking, clear-cut face and very strong shoulders and very
masterful hands. And from all of him came waves that thrilled--the
mysterious effluvia that compels and dominates the woman to whom Life
means this life.
At length he spoke with an effort. "We shall be married in Grace
Chapel." He grew calmer, and added, "People will think it was named for
you!"
"I am not going to marry you," she declared, vehemently.
"No. I am going to marry you. After you are my wife we naturally will
talk about it. That will enable us to learn whether we shall stay
married or not. Grace," he said, earnestly, "I'll do anything you wish."
"Leave this house, then."
"It's _your_ house, dear," he reminded her, gently, "and I am your
guest. That puts it out of your power to enforce your desire. Don't you
see?"
She tacitly admitted that there was an etiquette of hospitality by
asking, coldly, "Why should I marry you?"
"I can't give you as many reasons as I might if you asked why I should
marry you. The principal two are that I love you and that I am the only
man whom Grace Goodchild can marry and still remain Grace Goodchild."
It seemed to her impossible that he could be sitting beside her talking
about marriage seriously, and more than impossible that she could be
sitting there listening.
"People know you as Grace Goodchild. After the marriage they will know
you as the Grace Goodchild that H. R. has married. What would become of
you if you cease to be Grace Goodchild?"
She thought of Philadelphia, and shuddered. But he thought he had not
convinced her. He rose and said to her:
"Oh, my love! You are so utterly and completely beautiful that if I have
a man's work to do I shall succeed only because the reward is you! I
have come to the turning-point in my career and I must have the light of
your eyes to guide me."
She did not love him and therefore she heard his words very distinctly.
But she was a woman, and she was thrilled by his look and his voice and
by his manner. He was no longer a mountebank to her, but an unusual man.
And when she thought of not marrying him her mind reverted in some
curious way to Philadelphia and its subtle suggestions of sarcophagi and
the contents thereof. But this man must not think that he could win her
by stage speeches even though they might be real. She said to him,
determinedly:
"We might as well understand each other--"
"I am the creature; you are the creator," he quickly interjected. "You
are very beautiful, _very_! but you have much more than beauty. You
have brains, and I think your heart is a marvelous lute--"
"A what?" she asked, curiously. No woman will allow the catalogue to be
skimped or obscured.
"A lute, a wonderful musical instrument that some day will be played by
a master hand. When you cease to be merely a girl and become a woman,
with your capacity for loving when you let yourself go! Ah!" He closed
his eyes and trembled.
All women, at heart, love to be accused of being psychic pyromaniacs.
"_There will I give thee my loves!_" he muttered, quoting from the "Song
of Songs."
She knew it wasn't original because he said it so solemnly. She dared
not ask from whom the quotation was. It sounded like Swinburne.
"Come!" He was not quoting this time. He stood before her, his face
tense, his eyes aflame, his arms stretched imploringly toward her.
She met his gaze--and then she could not look away. She saw the
wonderful man of whom the papers had printed miles of columns, who had
made all New York talk of him for weeks, who was young and strong and
comely and masterful, who had an old name and a fighting jaw, whose
words stirred the pulses like a quickstep on the piccolo.
And his eyes made her understand what was meant by actinic rays. They
were looking at her, piercing through her garments until she felt
herself subtly divested of all concealments.
And then she trembled as if his eyes physically touched her! She
thrilled, she blushed, she frowned--for she felt herself desired. And
her thoughts became the thoughts of a woman who is wooed by life, by
love, by a man's red blood and her own. Her New York inhibitions turned
to ashes. Life-long mental habits withered and shriveled and vanished in
microscopic flakes until into her self-hypnotized consciousness there
came the eternal query of the female who has stopped running, "What can
I give to this man?"
And Hendrik, seeing her face, held his shaking hands before her,
impatiently beckoning to her to come. Some unseen spirit took her slim
hands and, without consulting her, placed them in his.
And then he kissed her.
The heavens flamed. She pushed him from her and sank back trembling upon
the divan on which Marie Antoinette was not sitting on the day when de
Rohan did not bring the diamond necklace that did not cause the French
Revolution, though Mr. Goodchild had paid eighteen thousand five hundred
dollars for the historic suite, in the Sunday supplement.