Chapter 7

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_ CHAPTER VII

IT is a surprising and trying moment for a girl who throws water upon a young man's face to see that face begin to dissolve and come off, feature by feature, in polychromatic splendour.

She did not faint; her intellect reeled for a moment; then she dropped her hands from her eyes and saw him sitting up on the ground, blinking at her gravely from a streaked and gaudy countenance. His wig was tilted over one eye; rouge and pearl powder made his cheeks and chin very gay; and his handsome, silky moustache hung by one corner from his upper lip. It was too much. She sat down limply on a mossy log and wept.

His senses returned gradually; after a while he got up and walked down to the edge of the brook with all the dignity that unsteady legs permitted.

Fascinated, she watched him at his ablutions where he squatted by the water's edge, scrubbing away as industriously as a washer-racoon. It did not occur to her to flee; curiosity dominated--an overpowering desire to see what he really resembled in _puris naturalibus_.

After a while he stood up, hurled the damp wig into the woods, wiped his hands on his knickerbockers and his face on his sleeve, and, bending over, examined his collapsed calves.

And all the while, as the fumes of the chloroform disappeared and he began to realise what had been done to him, he was becoming madder and madder.

She recognised the wrath in his face as he swung on his heel and came toward her.

"It is your own fault!" she said, resolutely, "for playing a silly trick like----" But she observed his advance very dubiously, straightening up to her full slender height to confront him, but not rising to her feet. Her knees were still very shaky.

He halted close in front of her. Something in the interrogative yet fearless beauty of her upward gaze checked the torrent of indignant eloquence under which he was labouring, and, presently, left him even mentally mute, his lips parted stupidly.

She said: "According to the old order of things a well-bred man would ask my pardon. But a decently-bred man, in the first place, wouldn't have done such a thing to me. So your apology would only be a paradox----"

"What!" he exclaimed, stung into protest. "Am I to understand that after netting me and chloroforming me and nearly drowning me----"

"My mistake was perfectly natural. Do you suppose that I would even dream of trailing _you_ as you really are?"

He gazed at her bewildered; passed his unsteady hand over his countenance, then sat down abruptly beside her on the mossy log and buried his head in his hands.

She looked at him haughtily, sitting up very straight; he continued beside her in silence, face in his hands as though overwhelmed. Nothing was said for several minutes--until the clear disdain of her gaze changed, imperceptibly; and the rigidity of her spinal column relaxed.

"I am very sorry this has happened," she said. There was, however, no sympathy in her tone. He made no movement to speak.

"I am sorry," she repeated after a moment. "It is hard to suffer humiliation."

"Yes," he said, "it is."

"But you deserved it."

"How? I didn't fashion my face and figure."

She mistook him: "_Somebody_ did."

"Yes; my parents."

"What!"

"Oh, I don't mean that silly make-up," he said, raising his head.

"What _do_ you mean?"

"I mean my own face and figure. What you did to me--your netting me, doping me, and all that wasn't a patch on what you said afterward."

"What do you mean? What did I say?"

"You asked me if I supposed that you would dream of netting a man with a face and f-figure like----"

"Mr. Langdon!"

"Didn't you?"

"I--you--we----"

"You did! And can any man suffer any humiliation to compare with words like those? I merely ask you."

With eyes dilated, breath coming quickly, she stared at him, scarcely yet comprehending the blow which her words had dealt to one of the lords of creation.

"Mr. Langdon," she said, "do you suppose that I am the sort of girl to deliberately criticise either your features or your figure?"

"But you did."

"I merely meant that you should infer----"

"I inferred it all right," he said bitterly.

Perplexed, not knowing how to encounter such an unexpected reproach, vaguely distressed by it, she instinctively attempted to clear herself.

"Please listen. I hadn't any idea of mortifying you by explaining that you are not qualified by nature to interest the modern woman in----"

He turned a bright red.

"Do you suppose such a condemnation--such a total ostracism--is agreeable to a man? . . . Is there anything worse you can say about a man than to inform him that no woman could possibly take the slightest interest in him?"

"I didn't say that. I said the modern woman----"

"You're all modern."

"It is reported that there are still a few women sufficiently old-fashioned to----"

"They don't interest me." He looked up at her. "What _you've_ said has--simply--and completely--spoiled--my life," he said slowly.

"What _I_ said?"

"Yes."

"What have--what could--what I--how--where--who is----" and she checked herself, eyes on his.

"Yes," he repeated with a curious sort of satisfaction, "you have spoiled my entire life for me."

"What an utterly--what a wildly absurd and impossible----"

"And you _know_ it!" he insisted, with gloomy triumph.

"Know what?"

"That you've spoiled----"

"Stop! Will you explain to me how----"

"Is it necessary?"

"Necessary? Of course it is! You have made a most grave and serious and--and heartless charge against a woman----"

"Yes, a heartless one--against you!"

"I? _Heartless?_"

"Cold, deliberate, cruel, unfeeling, merciless, remorseless----"

"Mr. Langdon!"

"Didn't you practically tell me that no woman could endure the sight of a face and figure like mine?"

"No, I did not. What a--a cruel accusation!"

"What _did_ you mean, then?"

"That--that you are not exactly--qualified to--to become an ancestor of the physically perfect race which----"

"What _is_ wrong with me, then?"

She looked at him helplessly. "What do you mean?"

"I mean where am I below proof? Where am I lacking? What points count me out?"

Her sensitive underlip began to tremble.

"I--I don't want to criticise you----" she faltered.

"Please do. I beg of you. There are beauty doctors in town," he added earnestly. "They can fix up a fellow--and I can go to a gymnasium, and take up deep-breathing and----"

"But, Mr. Langdon, do _you_ want to--to be--captured----"

He looked into her bright and melting eyes.

"Yes," he said. "I'd like to give you another chance at me."

"Me? After what I did to you?"

"Will you?"

"Why, what a perfectly astonishing----"

"Not very. Look me over and tell me what points count against me. I know I'm not good-looking, but I'd like to go into training for the bench--I mean----"

"Mr. Langdon," she said slowly, "surely _you_ would not care to develop the featureless symmetry and the--the monotonous perfection necessary to----"

"Yes, I would. I wish to become superficially monotonous. I'm too varied; I realise that. I want to resemble that make-up I wore----"

"That! Goodness! What a horrid idea----"

"Horrid? Didn't you like it well enough to net me?"

"I--there was nothing expressive of my personal taste in my capturing you--I mean the kind of a man you appeared to be. It was my duty--a purely scientific matter----"

"I don't care what it was. You went after me. You wouldn't go after me as I now appear. I want you to tell me what is lacking in me which would prevent you going after me again--from a purely scientific standpoint."

She sat breathing irregularly, rather rapidly, pretty head bent, apparently considering her hands, which lay idly in her lap. Then she lifted her blue eyes and inspected him. And it was curious, too, that, now when she came to examine him, she did not seem to discover any faults.

"My nose doesn't suit you, does it?" he asked candidly.

"Why, yes," she said innocently, "it suits me."

"That's funny," he reflected. "How about my ears?"

"They seem to be all right," she admitted.

"Do you think so?"

"They seem to me to be perfectly good ears."

"That's odd. What _is_ there queer about my face?"

She looked in vain for imperfections.

"Why, do you know, Mr. Langdon, I don't seem to notice anything that is not entirely and agreeably classical."

"But--my legs are thin."

"Not very."

"Aren't they too thin?"

"Not _too_ thin. . . . Perhaps you might ride a bicycle for a few days----"

"I will!" he exclaimed with a boyish enthusiasm which lighted up his face so attractively that she found it fascinating to watch.

"Do you know," she said slowly, "the chances are that I would have netted you anyway. It just occurred to me."

"Without my make-up?" he asked, in delighted surprise.

"I think so. Why not?" she replied, looking at him with growing interest. "I don't see anything the matter with you."

"My chest improver exploded," he ventured, being naturally honest.

"_I_ don't think you require it."

"Don't you? That is the nicest thing you ever said to me."

"It's only the truth," she said, flushing a trifle in her intense interest. "And, as far as your legs are concerned, I really do not believe you need a bicycle or anything else. . . . In fact--in fact--_I_ don't see why you shouldn't go with me to the University if--if you--care to----"

"You darling!"

"Mr. Langdon! Wh-what a perfectly odd thing to s-say to me!"

"I didn't mean it," he said with enthusiasm; "I really didn't mean it. What I meant was--you know--don't you?"

She did not reply. She was absorbed in contemplating one small thumb.

"I'm all ready to go," he ventured.

She said nothing.

"Shall we?"

She looked up, looked into his youthful eyes. After a moment she rose, a trifle pale. And he followed beside her through the sun-lit woods. _

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