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“I’d rather think that than to think you thought I was silly enough to want you to throw away your money.”
He was carving the chicken, and he handed her a portion upon one of the bright aluminum plates. But she shook her head in refusal.
“You aren’t going to have any of this?”
“No, thank you.”
“I call that rather too bad, because if you don’t it will be wasted.”
“It was wasted when you bought it.”
“But you didn’t tell me what to get.”
“I told you we’d each bring our own luncheon,” she reminded him.
“And so we did; but I don’t call it very friendly of you not to share with me.”
“I have quite enough of my own.”
She seemed determined about the matter, so he put all the things back again in the basket, closed and fastened the lid, and, placing it to one side, lighted a fresh cigarette. She watched him in amazement.
“Aren’t you going to eat your lunch?” she demanded.
“I refuse to eat alone.”
183
“I’m the one who is eating alone,” she said.
“That seems to be what you want.”
“You’ve no right to do things and then blame me for them,” she protested.
“You’re doing all the blaming yourself,” he returned.
For a moment she continued to eat her sandwich in silence and to watch his set face. She was quite sure he would remain stubborn in the stand he had taken.
“It was silly enough to buy all those expensive things, but it would be even sillier to throw them away,” she asserted.
“It would at least be too bad,” he confessed. “But I can’t help it, can I? I can’tmakeyou eat, you know.”
There he went again, placing the whole blame on her.
“Hand me that basket,” she ordered.
He handed her the basket, and she brought out the delicacies.
“Next time I shall prepare both lunches,” she declared.
“That will be very nice,” he nodded.
184CHAPTER XIXA LETTER
Letter from Miss Frances Stuyvesant to Donald Pendleton, Esq.:––
PARIS, FRANCE, June 20.DEAR OLD DON:––
PARIS, FRANCE, June 20.
DEAR OLD DON:––
I’m having a very good time, Don, dear, and I know you’ll be glad to hear that. Dolly has a great many friends in Paris, and so has Dad, and so has Chic. Between them all we are very gay. But it is raining to-day, and somehow I’ve been worrying about your being in town with nothing to do but work. I do hope you are taking care of yourself and running to the shore or the mountains for the week-ends.
Now I must hurry up and dress; but please remember that I am still, as always,
YourFRANCES.
YourFRANCES.
185CHAPTER XXSTARS
At lunch one warm Wednesday, Don suggested to Miss Winthrop that after the close of business they take a car for the beach instead of going to their respective homes.
“We can go down there, have our supper, and then get out of the crowd and smell the ocean awhile,” he said.
He had a knack for putting in a most reasonable light anything he wished to do. It was a feature of his selling gift, and she recognized it as such.
“What do you say?” he pressed her.
She blushed at her own hesitancy.
“Oh, I’ll go,” she answered.
The incident remained uppermost in her thoughts all the rest of the afternoon. If she had known about this excursion the day before, she would have put on a different shirt-waist. She had a new silk waist which was very pretty and which she had meant to wear next Sunday.
186
He met her at the Elevated station, but it was she who had to direct him to the proper trolley for Coney, or they might have landed anywhere along the Sound.
Stopping only long enough to buy an ice for supper and a bag of peanuts, they sought the beach. He threw himself down full length on the sand, and she sat with her hands clasped over her knees. The salt air swept her cheeks and cooled them, and the waves before her ran up the beach in play and song. This was certainly a decided improvement over such a night in her room.
“See those stars!” he exclaimed, as if this were the first time he had ever seen them.
She lifted her eyes and looked at them.
“I often look at them,” she said.
Then she laughed gently to herself.
“Do you know what I do when I’m silly enough to want jewels?” she asked.
“What?”
“I take a look at those stars, and then I don’t want jewels any more.”
“A man could give away diamonds by the handful if women would take that kind,” he187exclaimed. “See that big fellow up there?” He pointed it out, and she nodded.
“I’ll give you that one,” he offered.
She laughed lightly––confidently.
“But I don’t have to come to you or to any one,” she reminded him. “I can just give it to myself.”
“That isn’t quite the same thing, is it?”
No, it was not quite the same thing. She knew it. But she was not telling all she knew.
“It’s a wonder to me you’ve never married,” he said.
She caught her breath. She had come to look for unexpected remarks from him, but this was a trifle more unexpected than usual. She tried to laugh as she usually did, but she could not laugh.
“I suppose you’ve figured out that, with all your free diamonds, you’re better off as you are,” he suggested.
She did not answer.
“Is that the way of it?” he persisted.
She tried to make her voice natural, but there was a tightening in her throat.
188
“I haven’t done much figuring of any kind along that line,” she said.
He was looking out to sea.
“I don’t know but what both men and women are better off unmarried,” he said.
“They aren’t,” she answered.
It was some one within her rather than she herself who spoke. He turned to look at her, but her eyes were out at sea.
“You mean that?” he said.
“I mean it,” she answered.
“Even if a man hasn’t much money?”
She turned her eyes again to the sky.
“What has money to do with the stars?” she asked.
“Do you think a man in my position has any right to ask a woman to marry him?”
“What has your position to do with it?” she asked.
“It has a lot if the woman wants five times what I’m earning,” he answered.
She gave a little startled cry. The stars swam before her.
“Oh!” she gasped. “You mean––you mean you’re thinking of some one like––like that?”
189
“Yes,” he answered.
He had a vague notion this was not the sort of thing one ordinarily discussed with another woman. But Miss Winthrop was different from other women: she had both experience and common sense.
“I asked her to marry me a year ago,” he said.
The stars were still swimming before her.
“And––and she said––?”
“She said she thought I ought to wait until I was earning ten thousand.”
“And that’s the reason you––you wanted the ten thousand?”
“Yes. You didn’t think I wanted it for myself, did you?”
“I didn’t know,” she answered.
It was like a load removed from his shoulders. He breathed freer.
“You’re the most sensible woman I ever met, and I thought you could help me.”
She hated that word sensible now, though when Mr. Seagraves had used it to her it had seemed like a compliment.
“You see, I had plenty of money when we190were first engaged, and so it didn’t make any difference, even if she had plenty too. Then, when Dad tied up my share, why, it made things different. We talked it over and decided that ten thousand was about right; but––well, I didn’t think it would take so long to get it.”
“Where is––where is she now?” Miss Winthrop demanded.
“She went abroad in June to stay until September.”
“And left you here?”
“Of course. I couldn’t go.”
“And left you here?” she repeated.
“That’s what you get for being in business,” he explained. “We had planned to go together––on our honeymoon.”
The air was getting chill. She shivered.
“Aren’t you warm enough?” he asked.
He started to remove his jacket to throw over her shoulders, but she objected.
“I’m all right.”
“Better put it on.”
“No; I don’t want it.”
They were silent a moment, and then she said, almost complainingly:––
191
“As long as you couldn’t go, why didn’t she stay here with you?”
The question startled him.
“In town?” he exclaimed.
“Why didn’t she stay here and look after you?”
“Why, she couldn’t do that when she was going abroad.”
“Then she had no business to go abroad,” she answered fiercely.
“Now, look here,” he put in. “We aren’t married, you know. We’re only engaged.”
“Butwhyaren’t you married?”
“We couldn’t afford it.”
“That isn’t true. You could afford it on half what you’re earning.”
He shook his head. “You don’t know.”
“She should have married you, and if she wanted more she should have stayed and helped you get more.”
“And helped?” he exclaimed.
She was looking up at the stars again. They were getting steadier.
“It’s the only way a woman can show––she cares.”
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Then she rose. She was shivering again.
“I think we’d better go now.”
“But we haven’t been here a half-hour,” he protested.
“We’ve been here quite a long while,” she answered. “Please, I want to go home now.”
193CHAPTER XXIIN THE DARK
An hour or so later Miss Winthrop lay in her bed, where, with the door tight locked and the gas out, she could feel just the way she felt like feeling and it was nobody’s business. She cried because she wished to cry. She cried because it was the easiest and most satisfactory way she knew of relieving the tenseness in her throat. She burrowed her face in the pillow and cried hard, and then turned over on her pig-tails and sobbed awhile. It did not make any difference, here in the dark, whether the tears made lines down her face or not––whether or not they made her eyes red, and, worst of all, her nose red.
From sobbing, Miss Winthrop dwindled to sniveling, and there she stopped. She was not the kind to snivel very long––even by herself. She did not like the sound of it. So she took her wadded handkerchief and jammed it once into each eye and jabbed once at each cheek, and194then, holding it tight in her clenched fist, made up her mind to stop. For a minute or two an occasional sob broke through spasmodically; but finally even that ceased, and she was able to stare at the ceiling quite steadily. By that time she was able to call herself a little fool, which was a very good beginning for rational thinking.
There was considerable material upon which to base a pretty fair argument along this line. Admitting that Don Pendleton was what she had been crying about,––a purely hypothetical assumption for the sake of a beginning,––she was able to start with the premise that a woman was a fool for crying about any man. Coming down to concrete facts, she found herself supplied with even less comforting excuses. If she had been living of late in a little fool’s paradise, why, she had made it for herself. She could not accuse him of having any other part in it than that of merely being there. If she went back a month, or three months, or almost a year, she saw herself either taking the initiative or, what was just as bad, passively submitting. Of course, her motive had been merely to195help him in an impersonal sort of way. She had seen that he needed help, but she had not dreamed the reason for it. She had no warning that he had been deserted by her who should have helped him. She had no way of knowing about this other. Surely that ignorance was not her fault.
Here is where she jabbed her handkerchief again into each eye and lay back on her pig-tails long enough to get a fresh grip upon herself. Her skin grew hot, then cold, then hot again. It really had all been more the fault of this other than Mr. Pendleton’s. She had no business to go away and leave him for some one else to care for. She had no business to leave him, anyway. She ought to have married him away back when he first went to work to make a fortune for her. Why didn’t she take the money it cost to go to Europe and spend it on him? She had let a whole year go wasted, when she had such an opportunity as this! Here was a house waiting for her; here was Don waiting for her; and she had gone to Europe!
To put one’s self in another’s place––in a place of so delicate a nature as this––is a dangerous196business, but Miss Winthrop did not do it deliberately. Lying there in the dark, her imagination swept her on. The thought that remained uppermost in her mind was the chance this other girl had missed. She would never have it again. In the fall Don would receive his raise and be sent out to sell, and after that his career was assured. It remained only for him to hold steady––an easy matter after the first year––and his income was bound to increase by thousand-dollar jumps until he won his ten thousand and more. And with that there was not very much left, as far as she could see, for a woman to do. The big fight would be all over. A woman could no longer claim a partnership; she would simply be bought.
If last fall she had had the chance of that other, she would have had him out selling a month ago. Give her a year or two, and she would have him in that firm or some other. She could do it. She felt the power that minute.
This raised a new question. What was she to do from now on? Until now she had had the excuse of ignorance; but there was still another month before Don’s fiancée would be back.197And this month would count a whole lot to him. It was the deciding month. Farnsworth had been watching him closely, and had about made up his mind; but he was still on the alert for any break. He had seen men go so far and then break. So had she. It was common enough. She herself had every confidence in Don, but she was doubtful about how long it was wise to leave even him alone. Men could not stand being alone as well as women. They had not the same experience. It took a special kind of nerve to be alone and remain straight.
Well, supposing he did break, what was that to her, now that she knew about this other? Here was a perfectly fair and just question. The man had made his selection and given over his future into the care of the woman of his choice, and she alone was responsible. There could be no dispute about this. It was a fair question; and yet, as soon as she framed it, she recognized it as unworthy of her. Furthermore, it led to an extremely dangerous deduction––namely, that her interest, after all, was not entirely impersonal; for if it were what difference did one woman or twenty other women198make in her relations with him? To put the matter bluntly, she was acting exactly as if she were in love with him herself!
When Miss Winthrop faced that astounding fact she felt exactly as if her heart stopped beating for a full minute. Then it started again as if trying to make up for the lapse in a couple of breaths. She gasped for breath and, throwing off the bedclothes, jumped up and lighted the gas. Here was something to be met in the light. But, as soon as she caught sight of her flushed cheeks and her staring eyes, she hurriedly turned out the gas again and climbed back into bed. Here she lay like some trapped thing, panting and helpless. Over and over again she whispered, “I’m not! I’m not!” as if some one were bending over her and taunting her with the statement. Then she whispered, “It isn’t true! Oh, it isn’t true!” She denied it fiercely––vehemently. She threw an arm over her eyes even there in the dark.
It was such an absurd accusation! If she had been one of those silly, helpless creatures with nothing else to do in life but fall in love, it might have had some point; but here she was,199a self-respecting, self-supporting girl who had seen enough of men to know distinctly better than to do anything so foolish. It had been the confidence born of this knowledge that had allowed her from the start to take an impersonal interest in the man. And the proof of this was that she had so conducted herself that he had not fallen in love with her.
Then what in the world was she crying about and making such a fuss about? She asked herself that, and, with her lips firm together, determined that the best answer was to do no more crying and make no more fuss. So she settled back again upon her pig-tails, and stared at the ceiling and stared at the ceiling and stared at the ceiling.
200CHAPTER XXIITHE SENSIBLE THING
When Miss Winthrop rose the next morning, she scarcely recognized the woman she saw in the glass as the woman she had glimpsed for a second last night when she had risen and lighted the gas. Her cheeks were somewhat paler than usual, and her eyes were dull and tired. She turned from the glass as soon as possible, and donned a freshly laundered shirt-waist. Then she swallowed a cup of coffee, and walked part way to the office, in the hope that the fresh air might do something toward restoring her color. In this she was successful, but toward noon the color began to fade again.
The problem that disturbed her the entire morning long had to do with luncheon. She recognized that here she must strike the keynote to all her future relations with Mr. Pendleton. If she was to eliminate him entirely and go back to the time when he was non-existent, then she must begin to-day. It was so she preferred201to handle disagreeable tasks. She detested compromises. When she had anything to do, she liked to do it at once and thoroughly. If she had consulted her own wishes and her own interests alone, she would never have seen him again outside the office. But if she did this, what would become of him during this next month?
The trouble was that Don would get lonesome––not necessarily for her, but for that other. He was the sort of man who needed some one around all the time to take an interest in him. This deduction was based, not upon guesswork, but upon experience. For almost a year now she had seen him every day, and had watched him react to just such interest on her part. She was only stating a fact when she said to herself that, had it not been for her, he would have lost his position months before. She was only stating another fact when she said to herself that even now he might get side-tracked into some clerical job. Give him a month to himself now, and he might undo all the effort of the last six months. Worse than that, he might fall into the clutches of Blake and go to pieces in another way.
202
There was not the slightest use in the world in retorting that this, after all, was the affair of Don and his fiancée rather than hers. She had brought him through so far, and she did not propose to see her work wasted. No one would gain anything by such a course.
The alternative, then, was to continue to meet him and to allow matters to go on as before. It was toward the latter part of the forenoon that she reached this conclusion. All this while she had been taking letters from Mr. Seagraves and transcribing them upon her typewriter without an error. She had done no conscious thinking and had reached no conscious conclusion. All she knew was that in the early forenoon she had been very restless, and that suddenly the restlessness vanished and that she was going on with her typewriting in a sort of grim content. Half-past eleven came, and then twelve. She finished the letter, and went for her hat as usual, putting it on without looking in the glass.
Don met her a little way from the office, and she fell into step at his side.
203
“I was sort of worried about you last night,” he said. “You looked tired.”
“I guess I was,” she answered.
“Don’t you get a vacation before long?”
She could have had her vacation a month ago, but there seemed to be no reason for taking it. She had not been able to think of any place to which she wished to go. Then she had forgotten about it.
“I’ve decided to take it next month,” she answered.
She decided that much on the spot.
“I suppose there’s one due me, too,” he said. “Blake said something about it a while ago. But I don’t know what I’d do with a vacation if I took one.”
“I should think you had something very important to do with it,” she answered quickly.
“What do you mean?”
“Take it for your wedding trip.”
The suggestion made him catch his breath. “Look here,” he exclaimed. “That means getting married!”
“Surely it does,” she nodded.
They had reached the little restaurant, and204she hurried in. Without waiting for his assistance, she secured a cup of coffee and a sandwich for herself. Then she found a chair and sat down. She did not know how she was ever going to swallow anything, but she had to have something to do to occupy her hands.
“You put that up to a man as if it were the easiest thing in the world,” he observed, sitting in the next chair.
“Well, it is, isn’t it––once you’ve made up your mind?”
“Looks to me as if it was one thing to make up your mind to get married some day, and another really to get married.”
“It’s better to do it than to waste your time thinking about it,” she declared. “When Farnsworth hands you that raise, believe me, he’ll want you to have both feet on the ground.”
“Eh?”
“He won’t want you to be drifting in with only three hours’ sleep, the way you did most of last winter. He has a lot more confidence in married men, anyhow.”
Don laughed.
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“That phrase makes a man feel ten years married.”
She had been trying hard to eat her lunch, but without much success. He noticed this.
“What’s the matter with you?” he inquired.
“I don’t happen to be hungry, that’s all,” she answered.
“You didn’t catch cold last night?”
“No.”
“But look here––”
“Oh, I’m all right,” she answered.
He went to the counter and returned with some doughnuts for himself and a piece of cake for her.
“This looked so good I thought you might like it,” he said, as he placed it on the arm of her chair. “It’s so much easier to talk when eating. I want to hear more about this scheme of yours for marrying me off.”
“It isn’t exactly my suggestion.”
“You proposed it a minute ago.”
“All I said was that if you mean to get married, you’d better do it right away and be done with it.”
“During my vacation?”
206
She brought her lips together.
“Yes.”
“Do you know, that rather appeals to me,” he answered thoughtfully.
She turned aside her head.
“It’s the only sensible thing,” she assured him.
“It would give a man a chance to settle down and attend to business.”
“And give his wife a chance to help him.”
“By Jove, I’m going to propose that to Frances the day she lands!” he exclaimed.
He was finishing his last doughnut. Miss Winthrop rose. Once outside, she could breathe freely. She said:––
“Her––her name is Frances?”
“Frances Stuyvesant,” he nodded.
“When do you expect her home?”
“The first of September.”
“Then you’d better put in a bid to have your vacation the first two weeks in September,” she advised. “Business will begin to pick up right after that, and Farnsworth will need you.”
207CHAPTER XXIIILOOKING AHEAD
It was now the first week in August. If she could sustain his interest in the project for three weeks and get him married in the fourth, then she could settle back into the routine of her life. It was the only possible way of straightening out the tangle. Once he was safely married, that was the end. Their relations would cease automatically. The conventions would attend to that. As a married man he, of course, could not lunch with her or spend Saturday afternoons in the park with her, or Sunday in the country with her, or mid-week evenings anywhere with her. He would be exiled from her life as effectively as if he himself should go to Europe. In fact, the separation would be even more effective, because there would not be any possible hope of his coming back. For her it would be almost as if he died.
Back in her room that night, Miss Winthrop saw all these things quite clearly. And she saw208that this was the only way. In no other way could she remain in the office of Carter, Rand & Seagraves. If he did not marry in September,––she had applied that afternoon for her own vacation to parallel his,––then she must resign. Unmarried, he would be as irresponsible this coming winter as he was last, and if she remained would be thrown back upon her. She could not allow that––she could not endure it.
She had lost so many things all at once. She did not realize until now how much dreaming she had done in these last few months. Dreams of which at the time she had scarcely been conscious returned to-night to mock her with startling vividness. It was not so much that she wished to be loved as that she wished to love. That was where she had deceived herself. Had Don made love to her, she would have recognized the situation and guarded herself. But this matter of loving him was an attack from a quarter she had not anticipated.
In the next three weeks she left him little chance to think of anything but of his work and of Frances. She talked of nothing else at lunch;209she talked of nothing else on Saturday afternoons and on Sundays and whenever they met on other days. This had its effect. It accustomed him to associate together the two chief objectives in his life until in his thoughts they became synonymous. For the first time since their engagement, he began to think of Frances as an essential feature of his everyday affairs.
He began to think about what changes in the house would be necessary before she came. He talked this over with Miss Winthrop.
“I wish you could come up and look the place over before Frances gets here,” he said to her one day.
If the color left her face for a second, it came back the next with plenty to spare. The idea was preposterous, and yet it appealed to her strangely.
“I wish I could,” she answered sincerely.
“Well, why can’t you?” he asked.
“It’s impossible––of course,” she said.
“I could arrange a little dinner and ask some one to chaperon,” he suggested.
“It’s out of the question,” she answered firmly. “You can tell me all about it.”
210
“But telling you about it isn’t like letting you see it,” he said.
“It is almost as good, and––almost as good is something, isn’t it?”
There was a suppressed note in her voice that made him look up. He had caught many such notes of late. Sometimes, as now, he half expected to find her eyes moist when he looked up. He never did; he always found her smiling.
“I’d have Nora give everything a thorough cleaning before September,” she advised.
“I’ll do that,” he nodded.
He wrote it down in his notebook, and that night spoke to Nora about it. She appeared decidedly interested.
“It’s possible that in the fall you may have some one else besides me to look after,” he confided to her in explanation.
“It’s to be soon, sir?” she asked eagerly.
“In September, perhaps,” he admitted.
“It would please your father, sir,” she answered excitedly. “It’s lonesome it’s been for you, sir.”
He did not answer, but he thought about that211a little. No, it had not been exactly lonesome for him––not lately. That was because he was looking ahead. That was it.
“It hasn’t seemed quite natural for you to be living on here alone, sir,” she ventured.
“Dad lived here alone,” he reminded her.
“Not at your age, sir,” answered Nora.
From that moment there was much ado in the house. Don came home at night to find certain rooms draped in dusting clothes, later to appear as fresh and immaculate as if newly furnished. This gave him a great sense of responsibility. He felt married already. He came downtown in the morning a little more serious, and took hold of his work with greater vigor.
The next few weeks passed rapidly. Frances had finished her trip to Scotland and was on her way back to London. She was to sail in a few days now. He cabled her to let him know when she started, and three days later she answered. He showed her reply to Miss Winthrop.
Sail Monday on the Mauretania, but Dolly wants me to spend next two weeks after arrival in the Adirondacks with her.
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Miss Winthrop returned the cable with a none too steady hand.
“She mustn’t do that,” she said firmly.
“Of course she mustn’t,” he agreed. “You see, she doesn’t know she is to be married right away. Do you think I ought to cable her that?”
“I don’t think I would,” Miss Winthrop replied. “But I would let her know I didn’t approve of her arrangement.”
“Supposing I just say, ‘Have other plans for you’?”
“That would do,” she nodded.
So he sent her this message, and that evening at dinner Miss Winthrop spoke to him of another matter.
“I don’t think you have shown much attention to her parents this summer. Oughtn’t you to see them and let them know what you intend?”
“Tell Stuyvesant?” he exclaimed.
“Why should he object?” she asked.
“I don’t know as he will. Then again he might. You see, I’ve never told him just how Dad tied things up.”
213
“What difference does that make?” she demanded. “With the house and what you’re earning, you have enough.”
“It isn’t as much as he expects a man to give his daughter, though,––not by a long shot.”
“It’s enough,” she insisted. “Why, even without the house it would be enough.”
“Yes,” he answered, with a smile. “When you say it––it’s enough. I wish Stuyvesant knew you.”
The blood came into her cheeks. She wished he wouldn’t say things like that.
“It seems to me you ought to see him and tell him,” she said thoughtfully.
He shook his head.
“What’s the use of seeing him until I’ve seen Frances?”
“It’s all settled about her.”
“That she’ll marry me in September?”
“Of course,” she answered excitedly. “Why, she’s been waiting a whole year. Do you think she’ll want to wait any longer? As soon as she knows how well you’ve done, why––why, that’s the end of it. Of course that’s the end of it.”
214
“I wish I were as confident as you!”
“You must be,” she answered firmly. “You mustn’t feel any other way. The house is all ready, and you are all ready, and––that’s all there is to it.”
“And Frances is all ready?”
“When she promised to marry you she was ready,” she declared. “You don’t understand. I guess women are different from men. They––they don’t make promises like that until they are quite sure, and when they are quite sure they are quite ready. This last year should have been hers. You made a mistake, but there’s no sense in keeping on with the mistake. Oh, I’m quite sure of that.”
She was wearing a light scarf,––this was at Jacques’,––and she drew it over her shoulders. Somehow, the unconscious act reminded him of a similar act on the beach at Coney....
215CHAPTER XXIVVACATIONS
During this next week––the week Frances was on the ocean and sailing toward him––he gained in confidence day by day. Miss Winthrop was so absolutely sure of her point of view that it was difficult in her presence to have any doubts.
Frances was due to arrive on Monday, and for Sunday he had arranged at Jacques’ a very special little dinner for Miss Winthrop. Miss Winthrop herself did not know how special it was, because all dinners there with him were special. There were roses upon the table. Their odor would have turned her head had it not been for the realization that her trunk was all packed and that to-morrow morning she would be upon the train. She had written to an aunt in Maine that she was coming––to this particular aunt because, of the three or four she knew at all, this aunt was the farthest from New York.
216
As for him, he had forgotten entirely that Monday marked the beginning of her vacation. That was partly her fault, because for the last week she had neglected to speak of it.
Ordinarily she did not permit him to come all the way back to the house with her; but this night he had so much to talk about that she did not protest. Yes, and she was too weak to protest, anyway. All the things he talked about––his fears, his hopes, speculations, and doubts––she had heard over and over again. But it was the sound of his voice to which she clung. To-morrow and after to-morrow everything would be changed, and she would never hear him talk like this again. He was excited to-night, and buoyant and quick with life. He laughed a great deal, and several times he spoke very tenderly to her.
They had reached her door, and something in her eyes––for the life of him he could not tell what––caused him to look up at the stars. They were all there in their places.
“Look at ’em,” he said. “They seem nearer to-night than I’ve ever seen them.”
“I GUESS WOMEN ARE DIFFERENT FROM MEN”
“I GUESS WOMEN ARE DIFFERENT FROM MEN”
She was a bit jealous of those stars. It had been when with her that he had first seen them.
“You aren’t looking,” he complained.
She turned her eyes to the sky. To her they seemed farther away than ever.
“Maybe Frances is looking at those same stars,” he said.
She resented the suggestion. She turned her eyes back to the street.
“Where’s the star I gave you?” he asked.
“It’s gone,” she answered.
“Have you lost it?”
“I can’t see it.”
“Now, look here,” he chided her lightly. “I don’t call that very nice. You don’t have a star given you every night.”
“I told you I didn’t need to have them given to me, because I could take all I wanted myself. You don’t own the stars too.”
“I feel to-night as if I did,” he laughed. “I’ll have to pick out another for you.” He searched the heavens for one that suited him. He found one just beyond the Big Dipper, that shone steadily and quietly, like her eyes. He pointed it out to her.
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“I’ll give you that one, and please don’t lose it.”
She was not looking.
“Do you see it?” he insisted.
She was forced to look. After all, he could afford to give her one out of so many, and it would be something to remember him by.
“Yes,” she answered, with a break in her voice.
“That one is yours,” he assured her.
It was as if he added, “All the rest belong to Frances.”
She held out her hand to him.
“Thank you for your star,” she said. “And––and I wish you the best of luck.”
He took her hand, but he was confused by the note of finality in her voice.
“I don’t see any need of being so solemn about saying good-night,” he returned.
He continued to hold her hand firmly.
“But it’s good-bye and––God-speed, too,” she reminded him.
“How do you make that out?”
“You’re going on a long journey, and I––I’m going on a little journey.”