The Grain of Dust Part 41

"Thank you," said he, still in the same abstraction. He shook hands with her, moved hesitatingly toward the door. With his hand on the k.n.o.b he turned and glanced keenly at her. He surprised in her face a look of mystery--of seriousness, of sadness--was there anxiety in it, also? And then he saw a certain elusive reminder of her father--and it brought to him with curious force the memory of how she had been brought up, of what must be hers by inheritance and by training--she, the daughter of a great and simple and n.o.ble man----

"You'll come again?" she said, and there was the note in her voice that made his nerves grow tense and vibrate.

But he seemed not to have heard her question. Still at the unopened door, he folded his arms upon his chest and said, speaking rapidly yet with the deliberation of one who has thought out his words in advance:

"I don't know what kind of girl you are. I never have known. I've never wanted to know. If you told me you were--what is called good, I'd doubt it. If you told me you weren't, I'd want to kill you and myself. They say there's a fatal woman for every man and a fatal man for every woman.

I always laughed at the idea--until you. I don't know what to make of myself."

She suddenly laid her finger on her lips. It irritated him, to discover that, as he talked, speaking the things that came from the very depths of his soul, she had been giving him only part of her attention, had been listening for a step on the stairs. He was hearing the ascending step now. He frowned. "Can't you send him away?" he asked.

"I must," said she in a low tone. "It wouldn't do for him to know you were here. He has strict ideas--and is terribly jealous."

A few seconds of silence, then a knock on the other side of the door.

"Who's there?" she called.

"I'm a little early," came in an agreeable, young man's voice. "Aren't you ready?"

"Not nearly," replied she, in a laughing, innocent voice. "You'll have to go away for half an hour."

"I'll wait out here on the steps."

Her eyes were sparkling. A delicate color had mounted to her skin.

Norman, watching her jealously, clinched his strong jaws. She said: "No--you must go clear away. I don't want to feel that I'm being hurried. Don't come back until a quarter past four."

"All right. I'm crazy to see you." This in the voice of a lover. She smiled radiantly at Norman, as if she thought he would share in her happiness at these evidences of her being well loved. The unseen young man said: "Exactly a quarter past. What time does your clock say it is now?"

"A quarter to," replied she.

"That's what my watch says. So there'll be no mistake. For half an hour--good-by!"

"Half an hour!" she called.

She and Norman stood in silence until the footsteps died away. Then she said crossly to Norman: "You ought to have gone before. I don't like to do these things."

"You do them well," said he, with a savage gleam.

She was prompt and sure with his punishment. She said, simply and sweetly: "I'd do anything to keep _his_ good opinion of me."

Norman felt and looked cowed. "You don't know how it makes me suffer to see you fond of another man," he cried.

She seemed not in the least interested, went to the mirror of the bureau and began to inspect her hair with a view to doing it up. "You can go in five minutes," said she. "By that time he'll be well out of the way.

Anyhow, if he saw you leaving the house he'd not know but what you had been to see some one else. He knows you by reputation but not by sight."

Norman went to her, took her by the shoulders gently but strongly. "Look at me," he said.

She looked at him with an expression, or perhaps absence of expression, that was simple listening.

"If you meant awhile ago some such thing as I hinted--I will have nothing to do with it. You must marry me--or it's nothing at all."

Her gaze did not wander, but before his wondering eyes she seemed to fade, fade toward colorlessness insignificance. The light died from her eyes, the flush of health from her white skin, the freshness from her lips, the sparkle and vitality from her hair. A slow, gradual transformation, which he watched with a frightened tightening at the heart.

She said slowly: "You--want--me--to--_marry_--you?"

"I've always wanted it, though I didn't realize," replied he. "How else could I be sure of you? Besides--" He flushed, added hurriedly, almost in an undertone--"I owe it to you."

She seated herself deliberately.

After he had waited in vain for her to speak, he went on: "If you married me, I know you'd play square. I could trust you absolutely. I don't know--can't find out much about you--but at least I know that."

"But I don't love you," said she.

"You needn't remind me of it," rejoined he curtly.

"I don't think so--so poorly of you as I used to," she went on. "I understand a lot of things better than I did. But I don't love you, and I feel that I never could."

"I'll risk that," said Norman. Through his clinched teeth, "I've got to risk it."

"I'd be marrying you because I don't feel able to--to make my own way."

"That's the reason most girls have for marrying," said he. "Love comes afterward--if it comes. And it's the more likely to come for the girl not having faked the man and herself beforehand."

She glanced at the clock. He frowned. She started up. "You _must_ go," she said.

"What is your answer?"

"Oh, I couldn't decide so quickly. I must think."

"You mean you must see your young man again--see whether there isn't some way of working it out with him."

"That, too," replied she simply. "But--it's nearly four o'clock----"

"I'll come back at seven for my answer."

"No, I'll write you to-night."

"I must know at once. This suspense has got to end. It unfits me for everything."

"I'll--I'll decide--to-night," she said, with a queer catch in her voice. "You'll get the letter in the morning mail."

"Very well." And he gave her his club address.

She opened the door in her impatience to be rid of him. He went with a hasty "Good-by" which she echoed as she closed the door.

When he left the house he saw standing on the curb before it a tall, good-looking young man--with a frank amiable face. He hesitated, glowering at the young man's profile. Then he went his way, suffocating with jealous anger, depressed, despondent, fit for nothing but to drink and to brood in fatuous futility.