"I mean.... Why, just that you're glad to get rid of me!" she returned,
looking away. He noticed the nervous strength with which her hands
closed over the edge of the table, the whitening of their small
knuckles.... "It's perfectly natural, I guess. I've been a nuisance so
long, you've got every right to be tired of having me hang around--"
"But, my dear young woman--!"
She interrupted impatiently: "Oh, don't call me that. It don't mean
anything. I guess I know when I'm not wanted. I'll go now and never
bother you any more."
Moving a pace or two away, she resumed before Matthias could muster
faculties to cope with this emergency:
"All the same, I don't want you to think I don't appreciate
how good you've been to me--and patient, and all that. I am
grateful--honest'--but I'm not as dumb as you think: I know when I'm in
the way, all right!"
"But you entirely misunderstand me--"
"O no, I don't! You've made yourself plain enough, if you didn't think I
had sense enough to see. It don't take _brains_ to see through a man
who's only trying to be polite and kind--all the time bored--"
"But, Miss Thursday--"
She turned toward the door.
He made a gesture of open exasperation. This was all so unfair! He had
only meant to be kind and considerate and--and everything like that! And
now she had drawn against him one of those unique and damnable
indictments which seem to be peculiarly the product of a certain type of
feminine mentality, and against which man is constitutionally incapable
of setting up any effective defence, reason and logic alike being
arbitrarily ruled out of court by the essential injustice of the charge.
She chose to accuse him of having adopted toward her a mental attitude
of which he was wholly guiltless; and there was no way by which he might
persuade her of his innocence!
And it was so confoundedly clear that she considered herself,
temporarily at least, abused and altogether justified of her complaint!
"Please," he begged, "don't go yet. Give _me_ a chance!"
Her hand was on the knob. She hesitated, with an air of expectant and
generous concession.
"You're really quite unfair," he began; but paused to regain control of
himself and to wonder a little, blindly, why it was that he tolerated
her impudence--for it couldn't be called anything less. It would be much
more sensible and quite just to bow to her construction of their
indefinite relations and let her go her ways without more argument.
In spite of everything, he could not refrain from one last attempt to
set himself right.
"I don't quite know what to say to you," he resumed patiently, "when you
insist on putting thoughts into my head that never were there. I've
really wanted to help you--"
"Why?"
The monosyllable brought him up startled and staring. "Why? I hardly
know...."
"Didn't you know better?"
"I don't understand you--"
Her eyes were wide and dark to his; all trace of petulance had faded
from her manner. "You ought to. You ought to know," she insisted
quietly, "that a man like you can't be just _kind_ to a girl like me
without.... Oh!" she cried, "I suppose it would've been different if the
show had gone out--and everything--but now, with that hope gone--and
nothing more to do for you--with no prospects but to lose you--the only
friend I've got in the world--!"
Her voice broke at a high pitch, and she fell silent, turning away to
stare with swimming eyes down at the table. He saw her trembling
violently, her lips quivering. His amazement was extraordinary and
bewildering. He heard his voice, as it might have been another's,
saying: "Does it really mean so much to you?"
"Oh, can't you see!"
With a little, helpless motion of her hands, she lifted quickly to him a
face of flushed and tear-dimmed loveliness. Another man might have been
numb to its appeal: to Matthias it proved irresistible, coming sharp
upon the shock of comprehending that she offered him her love, herself.
In a stride, hardly knowing what he did, he folded the girl in his arms.
She lay therein for an instant as though bewitched by the exquisite
wonder of this consummation of her fondest, maddest dreams; then in a
breath became a woman reanimate and wild with love, clinging to him with
all her strength, in an ecstasy of impassioned tenderness.
Bending his head, Matthias found her lips.
"My dear, dear girl!" he murmured.
"Oh," she breathed, "I have loved you always--always!"
"If I had only known, if I had only guessed--!"
"How could you? _I_ didn't know ... not till a little while ago....
And even then, I couldn't have told you ... only the thought of losing
you ... my dear, my dear!"
"I never guessed...."
"You're not sorry? You're not angry with me--?"
"Angry? I adore you!"
"You will love me always?"
"Always and forever."
"And never send me away from you?"
"You shall never leave me but of your own will."
"I think I was going mad with the thought of losing you!"
"My beloved girl!..."
The dusky stillness of the room was murmurous with whispers, sighs,
terms of endearment half smothered and all but inaudible.
To these a foreign and alarming sound: a rapping at the door.
Matthias lifted his head, wincing from the interruption. The girl in his
arms moved feebly, as if to disengage. He held her for a moment still
more close. Her heart sounded sonorously against his bosom. "Hush!" he
said in a low and warning voice. And then the rapping was repeated. At
once he released her. She moved away, blushing and dishevelled, the
fragrant freshness of her starched linen waist a crumpled disorder, her
hair in disarray; her crimson face one of many evidences of the tumult
of her senses.