Phases of an Inferior Planet Part 6

His forcible self-confidence exercised a compelling effect. The girl lifted her head and looked at him. Tears stood in her eyes, and as the electric light caught the clear drops they cast out scintillant flashes.

Against the dim interior her head, with its nimbus of hair, had the droop and poise of the head of a mediaeval saint.

"Oh, but you don't know how unhappy I am!" she said.

He spoke as he would have spoken to Mr. Paul in the same circ.u.mstances.

"You have no one to whom you can go?"

"No."

"Then tell me about it."

His tone was that in which a physician might inquire the condition of a patient's digestion. It was absolutely devoid of the recognition of s.e.x.

"Oh, I have worked so hard!" said Mariana.

"Yes?"

"And I hoped to sing in opera, and--Morani tells me that--it will be impossible."

"Ah!" In the peculiar power of his voice the exclamation had the warmth of a handshake.

Mariana rested her chin upon her clasped hands and looked at him. "He says it must be a music-hall--or--or nothing," she added.

He was silent for a moment. He felt that it was a case in which his sympathy could be exceeded only by his ignorance. "And this is why you are unhappy?" he asked. "Is there nothing else?"

She gave a little sob. "I am tired," she said. "My allowance hasn't come--and I missed my dinner, and I am--hungry."

Algarcife responded with relieved cheerfulness.

"Why, we are prepared for that," he said. "I was just sitting down to my supper, and you will join me."

In his complete estrangement from the artificial restraints of society, it seemed to him the simplest of possible adjustments of the difficulty.

He felt that his intervention had not been wholly without beneficial results.

Mariana glanced swiftly up into his face.

"Come!" he said; and she rose and followed him.

CHAPTER V

As Mariana crossed the threshold the light dazzled her, and she raised her hand to her eyes. Then she lowered it and looked at him between half-closed lids. It was a trick of mannerism which heightened the subtlety of her smile. In the deep shadows cast by her lashes her eyes were untranslatable.

"You are very hospitable," she said.

"A virtue which covers a mult.i.tude of sins," he answered, pleasantly.

"If you will make yourself at home, I'll fix things up a bit."

He opened the doors of the cupboard and took out a plate and a cup and saucer, which he placed before her. "I am sorry I can't offer you a napkin," he said, apologetically, "but they allow me only one a day, and I had that at luncheon."

Mariana laughed merrily. The effects of recent tears were visible only in the added l.u.s.tre of her glance and the pallor of her face. She had grown suddenly mirthful.

"Don't let's be civilized!" she pleaded. "I abhor civilization. It invented so many unnecessary evils. Barbarians didn't want napkins; they wanted only food. I am a barbarian."

Algarcife cut the cold chicken and pa.s.sed her the bread and b.u.t.ter.

"Why, none of us are really civilized, you know," he returned, dogmatically. "True, we have a thin layer of hypocrisy, which we call civilization. It prompts us to sugar-coat the sins which our forefathers swallowed in the rough; that is all. It is purely artificial. In a hundred thousand years it may get soaked in, and then the artificial refinement will become real and civilization will set in."

Mariana leaned forward with a pretty show of interest. She did not quite understand what he meant, but she adapted herself instinctively to whatever he might mean.

"And then?" she questioned.

"And then we will realize that to be civilized is to shrink as instinctively from inflicting as from enduring pain. Sympathy is merely a quickening of the imagination, in which state we are able to propel ourselves mentally into conditions other than our own." His manner was aggressive in its self-a.s.sertiveness. Then he smiled, regarded her with critical keenness, and lifted the coffee-pot.

"I sha'n't give you coffee," he said, "because it is not good for you.

You need rest. Why, your hands are trembling! You shall have milk instead."

"I don't like milk," returned Mariana, fretfully. "I'd rather have coffee, please. I want to be stimulated."

"But not artificially," he responded. His gaze softened. "This is my party, you know," he said, "and it isn't polite to ask for what is not offered you. Come here."

He had risen and was standing beside his desk. Mariana went up to him.

The power of his will had enthralled her, and she felt strangely submissive. Her coquetry she recognized as an unworthy weapon, and it was discarded. She grew suddenly shy and nervous, and stood before him in the flushed timidity of a young feminine thing.

He had taken a bottle from a shelf and was measuring some dark liquid into a wine-gla.s.s. As Mariana reached him he took her hand with frank kindliness. In his cool and composed touch there was not so much as a suggestion of s.e.xual difference. The possibility that, as a woman, she possessed an attraction for him, as a man, was ignored in its entirety.

"You have cried half the evening?"

"Yes."

"Drink this." His tone was peremptory.

He gave her the gla.s.s, watching her as she looked into it, with the gleam of a smile in his intent regard. Mariana hesitated an instant.

Then she drank it with a slight grimace.

"Your hospitality has taken an unpleasant turn," she remarked. "You might at least give me something to destroy the taste."

He laughed and pointed to a plate of grapes, and they sat down to supper.

The girl glanced about the room critically. Then she looked at her companion.

"I don't quite like your room," she observed. "It is grewsome."

"It is a work-shop," he answered. "But your dislike is pure nonsense.

Skulls and cross-bones are as natural in their way as flesh and blood.