"Nothing but a cigarette," muttered Tennant. "I"ll go out to the gate if you--" He hesitated. "They generally sell peanuts out there," he added, vaguely.
"Squirrels adore peanuts," she murmured, caressing the squirrel, who had begun fearlessly snooping into her lap.
Tennant, enchanted at the tacit commission, started off at a pace that brought him to the gate and back again before he could arrange his own disordered thoughts.
She was reading when he returned, and she cooled his enthusiasm with a stare of surprise.
"The squirrel? Oh, I"m sure I don"t know where that squirrel has gone.
Did you really go all the way to the gate for peanuts to stuff that overfed squirrel?"
He looked at the four paper bags, opened one of them, and stirred the nuts with his hand.
"What shall I do with them?" he asked.
Then, and neither ever knew exactly why, she began to laugh. The first laugh was brief; an oppressive silence followed--then she laughed again; and as he grew redder and redder, she laughed the most deliciously fresh peal of laughter he had ever heard.
"This is dreadful!" she said. "I should never have come alone to the Park! You should never have dared to speak to me. All we need to do now is to eat those peanuts, and you have all the material for a picture of courtship below-stairs! Oh, dear, and the worst part of it all is that I laugh!"
"If you"d let me sit down," he said, "I"d complete the picture and eat peanuts."
"You dare not!"
He seated himself, opened a paper bag, and deliberately cracked and ate a nut.
"Horrors! and disillusion! The idol of the public--munching peanuts!"
"You ought to try one," he said.
She stood it for a while; but the saving grace of humour warned her of her peril, and she ate a peanut.
"To save my face," she explained. "But I didn"t suppose you were capable of it."
"As a matter of fact," he said, tranquilly, "a man can do anything in this world if he only does it thoroughly and appears to enjoy himself.
I"ve seen the Prince Regent of Boznovia sitting at the window of the Crown Regiment barracks arrayed in his shirt-sleeves and absorbing beer and pretzels."
"But _he_ was the Prince Regent!"
"And I"m Tennant."
"According to that philosophy you are at liberty to eat fish with your knife."
"But I don"t want to."
"But suppose you did want to?"
"That is neither philosophy nor logic," he insisted; "that is speculation. May I offer you a stick of old-fashioned circus candy flavored with wintergreen?"
"You may," she said, accepting it. "If there is any lower depth I may attain, I"m sure you will suggest it."
"I"ll try," he said. Their eyes met for an instant; then hers were lowered.
Squirrels came in troops; she fed the little, fat scamps to repletion, and the green lawn was dotted with squirrels all busily burying peanuts for future consumption. A brilliant peac.o.c.k appeared, picking his way towards them, followed by a covey of imbecile peafowl. She fed them until their crops protruded.
The sun glittered on the upper windows of the clubs and hotels along Fifth Avenue; the west turned gold, then pink. Clouds of tiny moths came hovering among the wistaria blossoms; and high in the sky the metallic note of a nighthawk rang, repeating in querulous cadence the cries of water-fowl on the lake, where mallard and widgeon were restlessly preparing for an evening flight.
"You know," she said, gravely, "a woman who over-steps convention always suffers; a man, never. I have done something I never expected to do--never supposed was in me to do. And now that I have gone so far, it is perhaps better for me to go farther." She looked at him steadily.
"Your studio is a perfect sounding-board. You have an astonishingly frank habit of talking to yourself; and every word is perfectly audible to me when my window is raised. When you chose to apostrophize me as a "white-faced, dark-eyed little thing," and when you remarked to yourself that there were "thousands like me in New York," I was perfectly indignant."
He sat staring at her, utterly incapable of uttering a sound.
"It costs a great deal for me to say this," she went on. "But I am obliged to because it is not fair to let you go on communing aloud with yourself--and I cannot close my window in warm weather. It costs more than you know for me to say this; for it is an admission that I heard you say that you were coming to the wistaria arbor--"
She bent her crimsoned face; the silence of evening fell over the arbor.
"I don"t know why I came," she said--"whether with a vague idea of giving you the chance to speak, and so seizing the opportunity to warn you that your soliloquies were audible to me--whether to tempt you to speak and make it plain to you that I am not one of the thousand shop-girls you have observed after the shops close--"
"Don"t," he said, hoa.r.s.ely. "I"m miserable enough."
"I don"t wish you to feel miserable," she said. "I have a very exalted idea of you. I--I understand artists."
"They"re fools," he said. "Say anything you like before I go. I had--hoped for--perhaps for your friendship. But a woman can"t respect a fool."
He rose in his humiliation.
"I can ask no privileges," he said, "but I must say one thing before I go. You have a book there which bears the signature of an artist named Marlitt. I am very anxious for his address; I think I have important news for him--good news. That is why I ask it."
The girl looked at him quietly.
"What news have you for him?"
"I suppose you have a right to ask," he said, "or you would not ask. I do not know Marlitt. I liked his work. Mr. Calvert suggested that Marlitt should return to resume work--"
"No," said the girl, "_you_ suggested it."
He was staggered. "Did you even hear that!" he gasped.
"You were standing by your window," she said. "Mr. Tennant, I think that was the real reason why I came to the wistaria arbor--to thank you for what you have done. You see--you see, I am Marlitt."
He sank down on the seat opposite.
"Everything has gone wrong," she said. "I came to thank you--and everything turned out so differently--and I was dreadfully rude to you--"
She covered her face with her hands.
"Then _you_ wrote me that letter," he said, slowly. In the silence of the gathering dusk the electric lamps snapped alight, flooding the arbor with silvery radiance. He said:
"If a man had written me that letter I should have desired his friendship and offered mine."