Chapter 22. Most Ungentlemanly

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_ CHAPTER XXII. MOST UNGENTLEMANLY

As we neared the upper end of the park, I told my chauffeur, through the tube, to enter and go slowly. Whenever a lamp flashed in at us, I had a glimpse of her progress toward composure--now she was drying her eyes with the bit of lace she called a handkerchief; now her bare arms were up, and with graceful fingers she was arranging her hair; now she was straight and still, the soft, fluffy material with which her wrap was edged drawn close about her throat. I shifted to the opposite seat, for my nerves warned me that I could not long control myself, if I stayed on where her garments were touching me.

I looked away from her for the pleasure of looking at her again, of realizing that my overwrought senses were not cheating me. Yes, there she was, in all the luster of that magnetic beauty I can not think of even now without an upblazing of the fire which is to the heart what the sun is to a blind man dreaming of sight. There she was on my side of the chasm that had separated us--alone with me--mine--mine! And my heart dilated with pride. But a moment later came a sense of humility. Her beauty intoxicated me, but her youth, her fineness, so fragile for such rough hands as mine, awed and humbled me.

"I must be very gentle," said I to myself. "I have promised that she shall never regret. God help me to keep my promise! She is mine, but only to preserve and protect."

And that idea of _responsibility in possession_ was new to me--was to have far-reaching consequences. Now that I think of it, I believe it changed the whole course of my life.

She was leaning forward, her elbow on the casement of the open window of the brougham, her cheek against her hand; the moonlight was glistening on her round, firm forearm and on her serious face. "How far, far away from--everything it seems here!" she said, her voice tuned to that soft, clear light, "and how beautiful it is!" Then, addressing the moon and the shadows of the trees rather than me: "I wish I could go on and on--and never return to--to the world."

"I wish we could," said I.

My tone was low, but she started, drew back into the brougham, became an outline in the deep shadow. In another mood that might have angered me. Just then it hurt me so deeply that to remember it to-day is to feel a faint ache in the scar of the long-healed wound. My face was not hidden as was hers; so, perhaps, she saw. At any rate, her voice tried to be friendly as she said: "Well--I have crossed the Rubicon. And I don't regret. It was silly of me to cry. I thought I had been through so much that I was beyond such weakness. But you will find me calm from now on, and reasonable."

"Not too reasonable, please," said I, with an attempt at her lightness. "A reasonable woman is as trying as an unreasonable man."

"But we are going to be sensible with each other," she urged, "like two friends. Aren't we?"

"We are going to be what we are going to be," said I. "We'll have to take life as it comes."

That clumsy reminder set her to thinking, stirred her vague uneasiness in those strange circumstances to active alarm. For presently she said, in a tone that was not so matter-of-course as she had tried to make it: "We'll go now to my Uncle Frank's. He's a brother of my father's. I always used to like him best--and still do. But he married a woman mama thought--queer. They hadn't much, so he lives away up on the West Side--One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street."

"The wise plan, the only wise plan," said I, not so calm as she must have thought me, "is to go to my partner's house and send for a minister."

"Not to-night," she replied nervously. "Take me to Uncle Frank's, and to-morrow we can discuss what to do and how to do it."

"To-night," I persisted. "We must be married to-night. No more uncertainty and indecision and weakness. Let us begin bravely, Anita!"

"To-morrow," she said. "But not to-night. I must think it over."

"To-night," I repeated. "To-morrow will be full of its own problems. This is to-night's."

She shook her head, and I saw that the struggle between us had begun--the struggle against her timidity and conventionality. "No, not tonight." This in her tone for finality.

To argue with any woman in such circumstances would be dangerous; to argue with her would have been fatal. To reason with a woman is to flatter her into suspecting you of weakness and herself of strength. I told the chauffeur to turn about and go slowly up town. She settled back into her corner of the brougham. Neither of us spoke until we were passing Grant's Tomb. Then she started out of her secure confidence in my obedience, and exclaimed: "This is not the way!" And her voice had in it the hasty call-to-arms.

"No," I replied, determined to push the panic into a rout. "As I told you, our future shall be settled to-night." That in _my_ tone for finality.

A pause, then: "It _has_ been settled," she said, like a child that feels, yet denies, its impotence as it struggles in the compelling arms of its father. "I thought until a few minutes ago that I really intended to marry you. Now I see that I didn't."

"Another reason why we're not going to your uncle's," said I.

She leaned forward so that I could see her face. "I can not marry you," she said. "I feel humble toward you, for having misled you. But it is better that you--and I--should have found out now than too late."

"It is too late--too late to go back."

"Would you wish to marry a woman who does not love you, who loves some one else, and who tells you so and refuses to marry you?" She had tried to concentrate enough scorn into her voice to hide her fear.

"I would," said I. "And I shall. I'll not desert you, Anita, when your courage and strength shall fail. I will carry you on to safety."

"I tell you I can not marry you," she cried, between appeal and command. "There are reasons--I may not tell you. But if I might, you would--would take me to my uncle's. I can not marry you!"

"That is what conventionality bids you say now," I replied. And then I gathered myself together and in a tone that made me hate myself as I heard it, I added slowly, each word sharp and distinct: "But what will conventionality bid you say to-morrow morning, as we drive down crowded Fifth Avenue, after a night in this brougham?"

I could not see her, for she fell back into the darkness as sharply as if I had struck her with all my force full in the face. But I could feel the effect of my words upon her. I paused, not because I expected or wished an answer, but because I had to steady myself--myself, not my purpose; my purpose was inflexible. I would put through what we had begun, just as I would have held her and cut off her arm with my pocket-knife if we had been cast away alone, and I had had to do it to save her life. She was not competent to decide for herself. Every problem that had ever faced her had been decided by others for her. Who but me could decide for her now? I longed to plead with her, longed to let her see that I was not hard-hearted, was thinking of her, was acting for her sake as much as for my own. But I dared not. "She would misunderstand," said I to myself. "She would think you were weakening."

Full fifteen minutes of that frightful silence before she said: "I will go where you wish." And she said it in a tone that makes me wince as I recall it.

I called my partner's address up through the tube. Again that frightful silence, then she was trying to choke back the sobs. A few words I caught: "They have broken my will--they have broken my will."

* * * * *

My partner lived in a big, gray-stone house that stood apart and commanded a noble view of the Hudson and the Palisades. It was, in the main, a reproduction of a French chateau, and such changes as the architect had made in his model were not positively disfiguring, though amusing. There should have been trees and shrubbery about it, but--"As Mrs. B. says," Joe had explained to me, "what's the use of sinking a lot of cash in a house people can't see?" So there was not a bush, not a flower. Inside--One day Ball took me on a tour of the art shops. "I've got a dozen corners and other big bare spots to fill," said he. "Mrs. B. hates to give up money, haggles over every article. I'm going to put the job through in business style." I soon discovered that I had been brought along to admire his "business style," not to suggest. After two hours, in which he bought in small lots several tons of statuary, paintings, vases and rugs, he said, "This is too slow." He pointed his stick at a crowded corner of the shop. "How much for that bunch of stuff?" he demanded. The proprietor gave him a figure. "I'll close," said Joe, "if you'll give fifteen off for cash." The proprietor agreed. "Now we're done," said Joe to me. "Let's go down town, and maybe I can pick up what I've dropped."

You can imagine that interior. But don't picture it as notably worse than the interior of the average New York palace. It was, if anything, better than those houses, where people who deceive themselves about their lack of taste have taken great pains to prevent any one else from being deceived. One could hardly move in Joe's big rooms for the litter of gilded and tapestried furniture, and their crowded walls made the eyes ache.

The appearance of the man who opened the door for Anita and me suggested that our ring had roused him from a bed where he had deposited himself without bothering to take off his clothes. At the sound of my voice, Ball peered out of his private smoking-room, at the far end of the hall. He started forward; then, seeing how I was accompanied, stopped with mouth ajar. He had on a ragged smoking-jacket, a pair of shapeless old Romeo slippers, his ordinary business waistcoat and trousers. He was wearing neither tie nor collar, and a short, black pipe was between his fingers. We had evidently caught the household stripped of "lugs," and sunk in the down-at-the-heel slovenliness which it called "comfort." Joe was crimson with confusion, and was using his free hand to stroke, alternately, his shiny bald head and his heavy brown mustache. He got himself together sufficiently, after a few seconds, to disappear into his den. When he came out again, pipe and ragged jacket were gone, and he rushed for us in a gorgeous velvet jacket with dark red facings, and a showy pair of slippers.

"Glad to see you, Mr. Blacklock"--in his own home he always addressed every man as Mister, just as "Mrs. B." always called him "Mister Ball," and he called her "Missus Ball" before "company." "Come right into the front parlor. Billy, turn on the electric lights."

Anita had been standing with her head down. She now looked round with shame and terror in those expressive blue-gray eyes of hers; her delicate nostrils were quivering. I hastened to introduce Ball to her. Her impulse to fly passed; her lifelong training in doing the conventional thing asserted itself. She lowered her head again, murmured an inaudible acknowledgment of Joe's greeting.

"Your wife is at home?" said I. If one was at home in the evening, the other was also, and both were always there, unless they were at some theater--except on Sunday night, when they dined at Sherry's, because many fashionable people did it. They had no friends and few acquaintances. In their humbler and happy days they had had many friends, but had lost them when they moved away from Brooklyn and went to live, like uneasy, out-of-place visitors, in their grand house, pretending to be what they longed to be, longing to be what they pretended to be, and as discontented as they deserved.

"Oh, yes, Mrs. B.'s at home," Joe answered. "I guess she and Alva were--about to go to bed." Alva was their one child. She had been christened Malvina, after Joe's mother; but when the Balls "blossomed out" they renamed her Alva, which they somehow had got the impression was "smarter."

At Joe's blundering confession that the females of the family were in no condition to receive, Anita said to me in a low voice: "Let us go."

I pretended not to hear. "Rout 'em out," said I to Joe. "Then, take my electric and bring the nearest parson. There's going to be a wedding--right here." And I looked round the long salon, with everything draped for the summer departure. Joe whisked the cover off one chair, his man took off another. "I'll have the women-folks down in two minutes," he cried. Then to the man: "Get a move on you, Billy. Stir 'em up in the kitchen. Do the best you can about supper--and put a lot of champagne on the ice. That's the main thing at a wedding."

Anita had seated herself listlessly in one of the uncovered chairs. The wrap slipped back from her shoulders and--how proud I was of her! Joe gazed, took advantage of her not looking up to slap me on the back and to jerk his head in enthusiastic approval. Then he, too, disappeared.

A wait followed, during which we could hear, through the silence, excited undertones from the upper floors. The words were indistinct until Joe's heavy voice sent down to us an angry "No damn nonsense, I tell you. Allie's got to come, too. She's not such a fool as you think. Bad example--bosh!"

Anita started up. "Oh--please--please!" she cried. "Take me away--anywhere! This is dreadful."

It was, indeed, dreadful. If I could have had my way at just that moment, it would have gone hard with "Mrs. B." and "Allie"--and heavy-voiced Joe, too. But I hid my feelings.

"There's nowhere else to go," said I, "except the brougham."

She sank into her chair.

A few minutes more of silence, and there was a rustling on the stairs. She started up, trembling, looked round, as if seeking some way of escape or some place to hide. Joe was in the doorway holding aside one of the curtains. There entered in a beribboned and beflounced tea-gown, a pretty, if rather ordinary, woman of forty, with a petulant baby face. She was trying to look reserved and severe. She hardly glanced at me before fastening sharp, suspicious eyes on Anita.

"Mrs. Ball," said I, "this is Miss Ellersly."

"Miss Ellersly!" she exclaimed, her face changing. And she advanced and took both Anita's hands. "Mr. Ball is so stupid," she went on, with that amusingly affected accent which is the "Sunday clothes" of speech.

"I didn't catch the name, my dear," Joe stammered.

"Be off," said I, aside, to him. "Get the nearest preacher, and hustle him here with his tools."

I had one eye on Anita all the time, and I saw her gaze follow Joe as he hurried out; and her expression made my heart ache. I heard him saying in the hall, "Go in, Allie. It's O K"; heard the door slam, knew we should soon have some sort of minister with us.

"Allie" entered the drawing-room. I had not seen her in six years. I remembered her unpleasantly as a great, bony, florid child, unable to stand still or to sit still, or to keep her tongue still, full of aimless questions and giggles and silly remarks that she and her mother thought funny. I saw her now, grown into a handsome young woman, with enough beauty points for an honorable mention, if not for a prize--straight and strong and rounded, with a brow and a keen look out of the eyes which it seemed a pity should be wasted on a woman. Her mother's looks, her father's good sense, a personality apparently got from neither, but all her own, and unusual and interesting. No wonder the Balls felt toward her much as a pair of barn-swallows would feel if they were to hatch out an eaglet. These quiet, tame American parents that are always finding their suppressed selves, the bold, fantastic, unadmitted dreams of their youth startlingly confronting them in the flesh as their own children!

"From what Mr. Ball said,"--Mrs. Ball was gushing affectedly to Anita,--"I got an idea that--well, really, I didn't know _what_ to think."

Anita looked as if she were about to suffocate. Allie came to the rescue. "Not very complimentary to Mr. Blacklock, mother," said she good-humoredly. Then to Anita, with a simple friendliness there was no resisting: "Wouldn't you like to come up to my room for a few minutes?"

"Oh, thank you!" responded Anita, after a quick, but thorough inspection of Alva's face, to make sure she was like her voice. I had not counted on this; I had been assuming that Anita would not be out of my sight until we were married. It was on the tip of my tongue to interfere when she looked at me--for permission to go!

"Don't keep her too long," said I to Alva, and they were gone.

"You can't blame me--really you can't, Mr. Blacklock," Mrs. Ball began to plead for herself, as soon as they were safely out of hearing. "After some things--mere hints, you understand--for I'm careful what I permit Mr. Ball to say before _me_. I think married people can not be too respectful of each other. I _never_ tolerate _vulgarity_."

"No doubt, Joe has made me out a very vulgar person," said I, forgetting her lack of humor.

"Oh, not at all, not at all, Mr. Blacklock," she protested, in a panic lest she had done her husband damage with me. "I understand, men will be men, though as a pure-minded woman, I'm sure I can't imagine why they should be."

"How far off is the nearest church?" I cut in.

"Only two blocks--that is, the Methodist church," she replied. "But I know Mr. Ball will bring an Episcopalian."

"Why, I thought you were a devoted Presbyterian," said I, recalling how in their Brooklyn days she used to insist on Joe's going twice every Sunday to sleep through long sermons.

She looked uncomfortable. "I was reared Presbyterian," she explained confusedly, "but you know how it is in New York. And when we came to live here, we got out of the habit of church-going. And all Alva's little friends were Episcopalians. So I drifted toward that church. I find the service so satisfying--so--elegant. And--one sees there the people one sees socially."

"How is your culture class?" I inquired, deliberately malicious, in my impatience and nervousness. "And do you still take conversation lessons?"

She was furiously annoyed. "Oh, those old jokes of Joe's," she said, affecting disdainful amusement.

In fact, they were anything but jokes. On Mondays and Thursdays she used to attend a class for women who, like herself, wished to be "up-to-date on culture and all that sort of thing." They hired a teacher to cram them with odds and ends about art and politics and the "latest literature, heavy and light." On Tuesdays and Fridays she had an "indigent gentlewoman," whatever that may be, come to her to teach her how to converse and otherwise conduct herself according to the "standards of polite society."

Joe used to give imitations of those conversation lessons that raised roars of laughter round the poker table, the louder because so many of the other men had wives with the same ambitions and the same methods of attaining them.

Mrs. Ball came back to the subject of Anita.

"I am glad you are going to settle with such a charming girl. She comes of such a charming family. I have never happened to meet any of them. We are in the West Side set, you know, while they move in the East Side set, and New York is so large that one almost never meets any one outside one's own set." This smooth snobbishness, said in the affected "society" tone, was as out of place in her as rouge and hair-dye in a wholesome, honest old grandmother.

I began to pace the floor. "Can it be," I fretted aloud, "that Joe's racing round looking for an Episcopalian preacher, when there was a Methodist at hand?"

"I'm sure he wouldn't bring anything but a Church of England priest," Mrs. Ball assured me loftily. "Why, Miss Ellersly wouldn't think she was married, if she hadn't a priest of her own church."

My temper got the bit in its teeth. I stopped before her, and fixed her with an eye that must have had some fire in it. "I'm not marrying a fool, Mrs. Ball," said I. "You mustn't judge her by her bringing-up--by her family. Children have a way of bringing themselves up, in spite of damn fool parents."

She weakened so promptly that I was ashamed of myself. My only apology for getting out of patience with her is that I had seen her seldom in the last few years, had forgotten how matter-of-surface her affectation and snobbery were, and how little they interfered with her being a good mother and a good wife, up to the limits of her brain capacity.

"I'm sure, Mr. Blacklock," she said plaintively, "I only wished to say what was pleasant and nice about your fiancee. I know she's a lovely girl. I've often admired her at the opera. She goes a great deal in Mrs. Langdon's box, and Mrs. Langdon and I are together on the board of managers of the Magdalene Home, and also on the board of the Hospital for Unfortunate Gentlefolk." And so on, and on.

I walked up and down among those wrapped-up, ghostly chairs and tables and cabinets and statues many times before Joe arrived with the minister--and he was a Methodist, McCabe by name. You should have seen Mrs. Ball's look as he advanced his portly form and round face with its shaven upper lip into the drawing-room. She tried to be cordial, but she couldn't--her mind was on Anita, and the horror that would fill her when she discovered that she was to be married by a preacher of a sect unknown to fashionable circles.

"All I ask of you," said I to him, "is that you cut it as short as possible. Miss Ellersly is tired and nervous." This while we were shaking hands after Joe's introduction.

"You can count on me, sir," said McCabe, giving my hand an extra shake before dropping it. "I've no doubt, from what my young neighbor here tells me, that your marriage is already made in your hearts and with all solemnity. The form is an incident--important, but only an incident."

I liked that, and I liked his unaffected way of saying it. His voice had more of the homely, homelike, rural twang in it than I had heard in New York in many a day. I mentally doubled the fee I had intended to give him. And now Alva and she were coming down the stairway. I was amazed at sight of her. Her evening dress had given place to a pretty blue street suit with a short skirt--white showing at her wrists, at her neck and through slashings in the coat over her bosom; and on her head was a hat to match. I looked at her feet--the slippers had been replaced by boots. "And they're just right for her," said Alva, who was following my glance, "though I'm not so tall as she."

But what amazed me most, and delighted me, was that she seemed to be almost in good spirits. It was evident she had formed with Joe's daughter one of those sudden friendships so great and so vivid that they rarely lived long after the passing of the heat of the emergency that bred them. Mrs. Ball saw it, also, and was straightway giddied into a sort of ecstasy. You can imagine the visions it conjured. I've no doubt she talked house on the east side of the park to Joe that very night, before she let him sleep. However, Anita's face was serious enough when we took our places before the minister, with his little, black-bound book open. And as he read in a voice that was genuinely impressive those words that no voice could make unimpressive, I saw her paleness blanch into pallor, saw the dusk creep round her eyes until they were like stars waning somberly before the gray face of dawn. When they closed and her head began to sway, I steadied her with my arm. And so we stood, I with my arm round her, she leaning lightly against my shoulder. Her answers were mere movements of the lips.

At the end, when I kissed her cheek, she said: "Is it over?"

"Yes," McCabe answered--she was looking at him. "And I wish you all happiness, Mrs. Blacklock."

At that name, her new name, she stared at him with great wondering eyes; then her form relaxed. I carried her to a chair. Joe came with a glass of champagne; she drank some of it, and it brought life back to her face, and some color. With a naturalness that deceived even me for the moment, she smiled up at Joe as she handed him the glass. "Is it bad luck," she asked, "for me to be the first to drink my own health?" And she stood, looking tranquilly at every one--except me.

I took McCabe into the hall and paid him off.

When we came back, I said: "Now we must be going."

"Oh, but surely you'll stay for supper!" cried Joe's wife.

"No," replied I, in a tone that made it impossible to insist. "We appreciate your kindness, but we've imposed on it enough." And I shook hands with her and with Allie and the minister, and, linking Joe's arm in mine, made for the door. I gave the necessary directions to my chauffeur while we were waiting for Anita to come down the steps. Joe's daughter was close beside her, and they kissed each other good-by, Alva on the verge of tears, Anita not suggesting any emotion of any sort. "To-morrow--sure," Anita said to her. And she answered: "Yes, indeed--as soon as you telephone me." And so we were off, a shower of rice rattling on the roof of the brougham--the slatternly man-servant had thrown it from the midst of the group of servants.

Neither of us spoke. I watched her face without seeming to do so, and by the light of occasional street lamps saw her studying me furtively. At last she said: "I wish to go to my uncle's now."

"We are going home," said I.

"But the house will be shut up," said she, "and every one will be in bed. It's nearly midnight. Besides, they might not--" She came to a full stop.

"We are going--home," I repeated. "To the Willoughby."

She gave me a look that was meant to scorch--and it did. But I showed at the surface no sign of how I was wincing and shrinking.

She drew farther into her corner, and out of its darkness came, in a low voice: "How I _hate_ you!" like the whisper of a bullet.

I kept silent until I had control of myself. Then, as if talking--of a matter that had been finally and amicably settled, I began: "The apartment isn't exactly ready for us, but Joe's just about now telephoning my man that we are coming, and telephoning your people to send your maid down there."

"I wish to go to my uncle's," she repeated.

"My wife will go with me," said I quietly and gently. "I am considerate of _her_, not of her unwise impulses."

A long pause, then from her, in icy calmness: "I am in your power just now. But I warn you that, if you do not take me to my uncle's, you will wish you had never seen me."

"I've wished that many times already," said I sadly. "I've wished it from the bottom of my heart this whole evening, when step by step fate has been forcing me on to do things that are even more hateful to me than to you. For they not only make me hate myself, but make you hate me, too." I laid my hand on her arm and held it there, though she tried to draw away. "Anita," I said, "I would do anything for you--live for you, die for you. But there's that something inside me--you've felt it; and when it says 'must,' I can't disobey--you know I can't. And, though you might break my heart, you could not break that will. It's as much my master as it is yours."

"We shall see--to-morrow," she said.

"Do not put me to the test," I pleaded. Then I added what I knew to be true: "But you will not. You know it would take some one stronger than your uncle, stronger than your parents, to swerve me from what I believe right for you and for me." I had no fear for "to-morrow." The hour when she could defy me had passed.

A long, long silence, the electric speeding southward under the arching trees of the West Drive. I remember it was as we skirted the lower end of the Mall that she said evenly: "You have made me hate you so that it terrifies me. I am afraid of the consequences that must come to you and to me."

"And well you may be," I answered gently. "For you've seen enough of me to get at least a hint of what I would do, if goaded to it. Hate is terrible, Anita, but love can be more terrible."

At the Willoughby she let me help her descend from the electric, waited until I sent it away, walked beside me into the building. My man, Sanders, had evidently been listening for the elevator; the door opened without my ringing, and there he was, bowing low. She acknowledged his welcome with that regard for "appearances" that training had made instinctive. In the center of my--our--drawing-room table was a mass of fresh white roses. "Where did you get 'em?" I asked him, in an aside.

"The elevator boy's brother, sir," he replied, "works in the florist's shop just across the street, next to the church. He happened to be down stairs when I got your message, sir. So I was able to get a few flowers. I'm sorry, sir, I hadn't a little more time."

"You've done noble," said I, and I shook hands with him warmly.

Anita was greeting those flowers as if they were a friend suddenly appearing in a time of need. She turned now and beamed on Sanders. "Thank you," she said; "thank you." And Sanders was hers.

"Anything I can do--ma'am--sir?" asked Sanders.

"Nothing--except send my maid as soon as she comes," she replied.

"I shan't need you," said I.

"Mr. Monson is still here," he said, lingering. "Shall I send him away, sir, or do you wish to see him?"

"I'll speak to him myself in a moment," I answered.

When Sanders was gone, she seated herself and absently played with the buttons of her glove.

"Shall I bring Monson?" I asked. "You know, he's my--factotum."

"_I_ do not wish to see him," she answered.

"You do not like him?"

After a brief hesitation she answered, "No." Not for worlds would she just then have admitted, even to herself, that the cause of her dislike was her knowledge of his habit of tattling, with suitable embroideries, his lessons to me.

I restrained a strong impulse to ask her why, for instinct told me she had some especial reason that somehow concerned me. I said merely: "Then I shall get rid of him."

"Not on my account," she replied indifferently. "I care nothing about him one way or the other."

"He goes at the end of his month," said I.

She was now taking off her gloves. "Before your maid comes," I went on, "let me explain about the apartment. This room and the two leading out of it are yours. My own suite is on the other side of our private hall there."

She colored high, paled. I saw that she did not intend to speak.

I stood awkwardly, waiting for something further to come into my own head. "Good night," said I finally, as if I were taking leave of a formal acquaintance at the end of a formal call.

She did not answer. I left the room, closing the door behind me. I paused an instant, heard the key click in the lock. And I burned in a hot flush of shame that she should be thinking thus basely of me--and with good cause. How could she know, how appreciate even if she had known? "You've had to cut deep," said I to myself. "But the wounds'll heal, though it may take long--very long." And I went on my way, not wholly downcast.

I joined Monson in my little smoking-room. "Congratulate you," he began, with his nasty, supercilious grin, which of late had been getting on my nerves severely.

"Thanks," I replied curtly, paying no attention to his outstretched hand. "I want you to put a notice of the marriage in to-morrow morning's _Herald_."

"Give me the facts--clergyman's name--place, and so on," said he.

"Unnecessary," I answered. "Just our names and the date--that's all. You'd better step lively. It's late, and it'll be too late if you delay."

With an irritating show of deliberation he lit a fresh cigarette before setting out. I heard her maid come. After about an hour I went into the hall--no light through the transoms of her suite. I returned to my own part of the flat and went to bed in the spare room to which Sanders had moved my personal belongings. That day which began in disaster--in what a blaze of triumph it had ended! Anita--my wife, and under my roof! I slept with good conscience. I had earned sleep. _

Read next: Chapter 23. "She Has Chosen!"

Read previous: Chapter 21. Most Unladylike

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