"Can I never convince you that I"m just a woman?" said she mockingly. "Just a woman, and one a man with your ideas of women would fly from."
"I wish you were!" I exclaimed. "Then--I"d not find it so--so impossible to give you up."
She rose and made a slow tour of the room, halting on the rug before the closed fireplace a few feet from me. I sat looking at her.
"I am going to give you up," I said at last.
Her eyes, staring into vacancy, grew larger and intenser with each long, deep breath she took.
"I didn"t intend to say what I"m about to say--at least, not this evening,"
I went on, and to me it seemed to be some other than myself who was speaking. "Certain things happened down town to-day that have set me to thinking. And--I shall do whatever I can for your brother and your father.
But you--you are free!"
She went to the table, stood there in profile to me, straight and slender as a sunflower stalk. She traced the silver chasings in the lid of the cigarette box with her forefinger; then she took a cigarette and began rolling it slowly and absently.
"Please don"t scent and stain your fingers with that filthy tobacco," said I rather harshly.
"And only this afternoon you were saying you had become reconciled to my vice--that you had canonized it along with me--wasn"t that your phrase?"
This indifferently, without turning toward me, and as if she were thinking of something else.
"So I have," retorted I. "But my mood--please oblige me this once."
She let the cigarette fall into the box, closed the lid gently, leaned against the table, folded her arms upon her bosom and looked full at me.
I was as acutely conscious of her every movement, of the very coming and going of the breath at her nostrils, as a man on the operating-table is conscious of the slightest gesture of the surgeon.
"You are--suffering!" she said, and her voice was like the flow of oil upon a burn. "I have never seen you like this. I didn"t believe you capable of--of much feeling."
I could not trust myself to speak. If Bob Corey could have looked in on that scene, could have understood it, how amazed he would have been!
"What happened down town to-day?" she went on. "Tell me, if I may know."
"I"ll tell you what I didn"t think, ten minutes ago, I"d tell any human being," said I. "They"ve got me strapped down in the press. At ten o"clock in the morning--precisely at ten--they"re going to put on the screws." I laughed. "I guess they"ll have me squeezed pretty dry before noon."
She shivered.
"So, you see," I continued, "I don"t deserve any credit for giving you up.
I only antic.i.p.ate you by about twenty-four hours. Mine"s a deathbed repentance."
"I"d thought of that," said she reflectively. Presently she added: "Then, it is true." And I knew Sammy had given her some hint that prepared her for my confession.
"Yes--I can"t go bl.u.s.tering through the matrimonial market," replied I.
"I"ve been thrown out. I"m a beggar at the gates."
"A beggar at the gates," she murmured.
I got up and stood looking down at her.
"Don"t _pity_ me!" I said. "My remark was a figure of speech. I want no alms. I wouldn"t take even you as alms. They"ll probably get me down, and stamp the life out of me--nearly. But not quite--don"t you lose sight of that. They can"t kill me, and they can"t tame me. I"ll recover, and I"ll strew the Street with their blood and broken bones."
She drew in her breath sharply.
"And a minute ago I was almost liking you!" she exclaimed.
I retreated to my chair and gave her a smile that must have been grim.
"Your ideas of life and of men are like a cloistered nun"s," said I. "If there are any real men among your acquaintances, you may find out some day that they"re not so much like lapdogs as they pretend--and that you wouldn"t like them, if they were."
"What--just what--happened to you down town to-day--after you left me?"
"A friend of mine has been luring me into a trap--why, I can"t quite fathom. To-day he sprang the trap and ran away."
"A friend of yours?"
"The man we were talking about--your ex-G.o.d--Langdon."
"Langdon," she repeated, and her tone told me that Sammy knew and had hinted to her more than I suspected him of knowing. And, with her arms still folded, she paced up and down the room. I watched her slender feet in pale blue slippers appear and disappear--first one, then the other--at the edge of her trailing skirt.
Presently she stopped in front of me. Her eyes were gazing past me.
"You are sure it was he?" she asked.
I could not answer immediately, so amazed was I at her expression. I had been regarding her as a being above and apart, an incarnation of youth and innocence; with a shock it now came to me that she was experienced, intelligent, that she understood the whole of life, the dark as fully as the light, and that she was capable to live it, too. It was not a girl that was questioning me there; it was a woman.
"Yes--Langdon," I replied. "But I"ve no quarrel with him. My reverse is nothing but the fortune of war. I a.s.sure you, when I see him again, I"ll be as friendly as ever--only a bit less of a trusting a.s.s, I fancy. We"re a lot of free lances down in the Street. We fight now on one side, now on the other. We change sides whenever it"s expedient; and under the code it"s not necessary to give warning. To-day, before I knew he was the a.s.sa.s.sin, I had made my plans to try to save myself at his expense, though I believed him to be the best friend I had down town. No doubt he"s got some good reason for creeping up on me in the dark."
"You are sure it was he?" she repeated.
"He, and n.o.body else," replied I. "He decided to do me up--and I guess he"ll succeed. He"s not the man to lift his gun unless he"s sure the bird will fall."
"Do you really not care any more than you show?" she asked. "Or is your manner only bravado--to show off before me?"
"I don"t care a d.a.m.n, since I"m to lose you," said I. "It"ll be a G.o.dsend to have a hard row to hoe the next few months or years."
She went back to leaning against the table, her arms folded as before. I saw she was thinking out something. Finally she said:
"I have decided not to accept your release."
I sprang to my feet.
"Anita!" I cried, my arms stretched toward her.
But she only looked coldly at me, folded her arms the more tightly and said:
"Do not misunderstand me. The bargain is the same as before. If you want me on those terms, I must--give myself."
"Why?" I asked.
A faint smile, with no mirth in it, drifted round the corners of her mouth.