You keep one, I the other. Why not sign now?"
She read the form--the agreement to take each other as lawful husband and wife and to regard the contract as in all respects binding and legal.
"Do you understand it?" laughed he nervously, for her manner was disquieting.
"Perfectly."
"You stared at the paper as if it were a puzzle."
"It is," said she.
"Come into the library and we"ll sign and have it over with."
She laid the papers on the dressing table, took up her brush, drew it slowly over her hair several times.
"Wake up," cried he, good humoredly. "Come on into the library." And he went to the threshold.
She continued brushing her hair. "I can"t sign," said she.
There was the complete absence of emotion that caused her to be misunderstood always by those who did not know her peculiarities. No one could have suspected the vision of the old women of the dive before her eyes, the sound of the hunchback"s piano in her ears, the smell of foul liquors and foul bodies and foul breaths in her nostrils. Yet she repeated:
"No--I can"t sign."
He returned to his chair, seated himself, a slight cloud on his brow, a wicked smile on his lips. "Now what the devil!" said he gently, a jeer in his quiet voice. "What"s all this about?"
"I can"t marry you," said she. "I wish to live on as we are."
"But if we do that we can"t get up where we want to go."
"I don"t wish to know anyone but interesting men of the sort that does things--and women of my own sort. Those people have no interest in conventionalities."
"That"s not the crowd we set out to conquer," said he. "You seem to have forgotten."
"It"s you who have forgotten," replied she.
"Yes--yes--I know," he hastened to say. "I wasn"t accusing you of breaking your agreement. You"ve lived up to it--and more. But, Susan, the people you care about don"t especially interest me. Brent--yes. He"s a man of the world as well as one of the artistic chaps. But the others--they"re beyond me.
I admit it"s all fine, and I"m glad you go in for it. But the only crowd that"s congenial to me is the crowd that we"ve got to be married to get in with."
She saw his point--saw it more clearly than did he. To him the world of fashion and luxurious amus.e.m.e.nt seemed the only world worth while. He accepted the scheme of things as he found it, had the conventional ambitions--to make in succession the familiar goals of the conventional human success--power, wealth, social position. It was impossible for him to get any other idea of a successful life, of ambitions worthy a man"s labor. It was evidence of the excellence of his mind that he was able to tolerate the idea of the possibility of there being another mode of success worth while.
"I"m helping you in your ambitions--in doing what you think is worth while," said he. "Don"t you think you owe it to me to help me in mine?"
He saw the slight change of expression that told him how deeply he had touched her.
"If I don"t go in for the high society game," he went on, "I"ll have nothing to do. I"ll be adrift--gambling, drinking, yawning about and going to pieces. A man"s got to have something to work for--and he can"t work unless it seems to him worth doing."
She was staring into the mirror, her elbows on the table, her chin upon her interlaced fingers. It would be difficult to say how much of his gentleness to her was due to her physical charm for him, and how much to his respect for her mind and her character. He himself would have said that his weakness was altogether the result of the spell her physical charm cast over him. But it is probable that the other element was the stronger.
"You"ll not be selfish, Susan?" urged he. "You"ll give me a square deal."
"Yes--I see that it does look selfish," said she. "A little while ago I"d not have been able to see any deeper than the looks of it. Freddie, there are some things no one has a right to ask of another, and no one has a right to grant."
The ugliness of his character was becoming less easy to control. This girl whom he had picked up, practically out of the gutter, and had heaped generosities upon, was trying his patience too far. But he said, rather amiably:
"Certainly I"m not asking any such thing of you in asking you to become a respectable married woman, the wife of a rich man."
"Yes--you are, Freddie," replied she gently. "If I married you, I"d be signing an agreement to lead your life, to give up my own--an agreement to become a sort of woman I"ve no desire to be and no interest in being; to give up trying to become the only sort of woman I think is worth while. When we were discussing my coming with you, you made this same proposal in another form. I refused it then. And I refuse it now. It"s harder to refuse now, but I"m stronger."
"Stronger, thanks to the money you"ve got from me--the money and the rest of it," sneered he.
"Haven"t I earned all I"ve got?" said she, so calmly that he did not realize how the charge of ingrat.i.tude, unjust though it was, had struck into her.
"You have changed!" said he. "You"re getting as hard as the rest of us. So it"s all a matter of money, of give and take--is it? None of the generosity and sentiment you used to be full of? You"ve simply been using me."
"It can be put that way," replied she. "And no doubt you honestly see it that way. But I"ve got to see my own interest and my own right, Freddie. I"ve learned at last that I mustn"t trust to anyone else to look after them for me."
"Are you riding for a fall--Queenie?"
At "Queenie" she smiled faintly. "I"m riding the way I always have," answered she. "It has carried me down. But--it has brought me up again." She looked at him with eyes that appealed, without yielding. "And I"ll ride that way to the end--up or down," said she. "I can"t help it."
"Then you want to break with me?" he asked--and he began to look dangerous.
"No," replied she. "I want to go on as we are. . . . I"ll not be interfering in your social ambitions, in any way. Over here it"ll help you to have a mistress who--" she saw her image in the gla.s.s, threw him an arch glance--"who isn"t altogether unattractive won"t it? And if you found you could go higher by marrying some woman of the grand world--why, you"d be free to do it."
He had a way of looking at her that gave her--and himself--the sense of a delirious embrace. He looked at her so, now. He said:
"You take advantage of my being crazy about you--_d.a.m.n_ you!"
"Heaven knows," laughed she, "I need every advantage I can find."
He touched her--the lightest kind of touch. It carried the sense of embrace in his look still more giddily upward.
"Queenie!" he said softly.
She smiled at him through half closed eyes that with a gentle and shy frankness confessed the secret of his attraction for her. There was, however, more of strength than of pa.s.sion in her face as a whole. Said she:
"We"re getting on well--as we are aren"t we? I can meet the most amusing and interesting people--my sort of people. You can go with the people and to the places you like and you"ll not be bound. If you should take a notion to marry some woman with a big position--you"d not have to regret being tied to--Queenie."
"But--I want you--I want you," said he. "I"ve got to have you."
"As long as you like," said she. "But on terms I can accept--always on terms I can accept. Never on any others--never! I can"t help it. I can yield everything but that."
Where she was concerned he was the primitive man only. The higher his pa.s.sion rose, the stronger became his desire for absolute possession. When she spoke of terms--of the limitations upon his possession of her--she transformed his pa.s.sion into fury. He eyed her wickedly, abruptly demanded:
"When did you decide to make this kick-up?"
"I don"t know. Simply--when you asked me to sign, I found I couldn"t."
"You don"t expect _me_ to believe that."
"It"s the truth." She resumed brushing her hair.