The Price She Paid Part 49

"That's over," said she. "I lost my voice, and I lost my job."

"So I heard," said he. "I know Crossley. I dropped in to see him this morning, and he told me about a foolish, fas.h.i.+onable girl who made a bluff at going on the stage--he said she had a good voice and was a swell looker, but proved to be a regular 'four-flusher.' I recognized you."

"Thanks," said she dryly.

"So, I came to see you."

She inquired about Mrs. Brindley and then about Stanley Baird. Finding that he was in Italy, she inquired: "Do you happen to know his address?"

"I'll get it and send it to you. He has taken a house at Monte Carlo for the winter."

"And you?"

"I shall stay here--I think."

"You may join him?"

"It depends"--he looked at her--"upon you."

He could put a wonderful amount of meaning into a slight inflection.

She struggled--not in vain--to keep from changing expression.

"You realize now that the career is quite hopeless?" said he.

She did not answer.

"You do not like the stage life?"

"No."

"And the stage life does not like you?"

"No."

"Your voice lacks both strength and stability?"

"Yes."

"And you have found the one way by which you could get on--and you don't like it?"

"Crossley told you?" said she, the color flaring.

"Your name was not mentioned. You may not believe it, but Crossley is a gentleman."

She walked on in silence.

"I did not expect your failure to come so soon--or in quite that way,"

he went on. "I got Mrs. Brindley to exact a promise from you that you'd let her know about yourself. I called on Mrs. Belloc one day when you were out, and gave her my confidence and got hers--and a.s.sured myself that you were in good hands. Crossley's tale gave me--a shock.

I came at once."

"Then you didn't abandon me to my fate, as I thought?"

He smiled in his strange way. "I?--when I loved you? Hardly."

"Then you did interest yourself in me because you cared--precisely as I said," laughed she.

"And I should have given you up if you had succeeded--precisely as I said," replied he.

"You wished me to fail?"

"I wished you to fail. I did everything I could to help you to succeed. I even left you absolutely alone, set you in the right way--the only way in which anyone can win success."

"Yes, you made me throw away the crutches and try to walk."

"It was hard to do that. Those strains are very wearing at my time of life."

"You never were any younger, and you'll never be any older," laughed she. "That's your charm--one of them."

"Mildred, do you still care?"

"How did you know?" inquired she mockingly.

"You didn't try to conceal it. I'd not have ventured to say and do the things I said and did if I hadn't felt that we cared for each other.

But, so long as you were leading that fatuous life and dreaming those foolish dreams, I knew we could never be happy."

"That is true--oh, SO true," replied she.

"But now--you have tried, and that has made a woman of you. And you have failed, and that has made you ready to be a wife--to be happy in the quiet, private ways."

She was silent.

"I can make enough for us both--as much as we will need or want--as much as you please, if you aren't too extravagant. And I can do it easily. It's making little sums--a small income--that's hard in this ridiculous world. Let's marry, go to California or Europe for several months, then come back here and live like human beings."

She was silent. Block after block they walked along, as if neither had anything especial in mind, anything worth the trouble of speech.

Finally he said:

"Well?"

"I can't answer--yet," said she. "Not to-day--not till I've thought."

She glanced quickly at him. Over his impa.s.sive face, so beautifully regular and, to her, so fascinating, there pa.s.sed a quick dark shadow, and she knew that he was suffering. He laughed quietly, his old careless, indifferent laugh.

"Oh, yes, you can answer," said he. "You have answered."

She drew in her breath sharply.

"You have refused."

"Why do you say that, Donald?" she pleaded.