"Do you want me to tell you what he said?"
"I think I know. But do as you like."
"Maybe I"d better tell you. I seem to want to get rid of it."
"Then do."
"It was about that girl." She sat upright and looked at him for encouragement. He nodded. She went on: "He said that if I asked you, you would not dare deny you were--were--giving her money."
"Her and her father."
She shrank, startled. Then her lips smiled bravely, and she said, "He didn"t say anything about her father."
"No. That was my own correction of his story."
She looked at him with wonder and doubt. "You aren"t--_doing_ it, Fred!"
she exclaimed.
He nodded. "Yes, indeed." He looked at her placidly. "Why not?"
"You are _supporting_ her?"
"If you wish to put it that way," said he carelessly. "My money pays the bills--all the bills."
"Fred!"
"Yes? What is it? Why are you so agitated?" He studied her face, then rose, took a final pull at the cigarette, tossed it in the fire. "I must be going," he said, in a cool, even voice.
She started up in a panic. "Fred! What do you mean? Are you angry with me?"
His calm regard met hers. "I do not like--this sort of thing," he said.
"But surely you"ll explain. Surely I"m ent.i.tled to an explanation."
"Why should I explain? You have evidently found an explanation that satisfies you." He drew himself up in a quiet gesture of haughtiness.
"Besides, it has never been my habit to allow myself to be questioned or to explain myself."
Her eyes widened with terror. "Fred!" she gasped. "What _do_ you mean?"
"Precisely what I say," said he, in the same cool, inevitable way. "A man came to you with a story about me. You listened. A sufficient answer to the story was that I am marrying you. That answer apparently does not content you. Very well. I shall make no other."
She gazed at him uncertainly. She felt him going--and going finally.
She seized him with desperate fingers, cried: "I _am_ content. Oh, Fred--don"t frighten me this way!"
He smiled satirically. "Are you afraid of the scandal--because everything for the wedding has gone so far?"
"How can you think that!" cried she--perhaps too vigorously, a woman would have thought.
"What else is there for me to think? You certainly haven"t shown any consideration for me."
"But you told me yourself that you were false to me."
"Really? When?"
She forgot her fear in a gush of rage rising from sudden realization of what she was doing--of how leniently and weakly and without pride she was dealing with this man. "Didn"t you admit----"
"Pardon me," said he, and his manner might well have calmed the wildest tempest of anger. "I did not admit. I never admit. I leave that to people of the sort who explain and excuse and apologize. I simply told you I was paying the expenses of a family named Hallowell."
"But _why_ should you do it, Fred?"
His smile was gently satirical. "I thought Tetlow told you why."
"I don"t believe him!"
"Then why this excitement?"
One could understand how the opposition witnesses dreaded facing him. "I don"t know just why," she stammered. "It seemed to me you were admitting--I mean, you were confirming what that man accused you of."
"And of what did he accuse me? I might say, of what do _you_ accuse me?"
When she remained silent he went on: "I am trying to be reasonable, Josephine. I am trying to keep my temper."
The look in her eyes--the fear, the timidity--was a startling revelation of character--of the cowardice with which love undermines the strongest nature. "I know I"ve been foolish and incoherent, Fred," she pleaded.
"But--I love you! And you remember how I always was afraid of that girl."
"Just what do you wish to know?"
"Nothing, dear--nothing. I am not sillily jealous. I ought to be admiring you for your generosity--your charity."
"It"s neither the one nor the other," said he with exasperating deliberateness.
She quivered. "Then _what_ is it?" she cried. "You are driving me crazy with your evasions." Pleadingly, "You must admit they _are_ evasions."
He b.u.t.toned his coat in tranquil preparation to depart. She instantly took alarm. "I don"t mean that. It"s my fault, not asking you straight out. Fred, tell me--won"t you? But if you are too cross with me, then--don"t tell me." She laughed nervously, hiding her submission beneath a seeming of mocking exaggeration of humility. "I"ll be good.
I"ll behave."
A man who admired her as a figure, a man who liked her, a man who had no feeling for her beyond the general human feeling of wishing well pretty nearly everybody--in brief, any man but one who had loved her and had gotten over it would have deeply pitied and sympathized with her. Fred Norman said, his look and his tone coolly calm:
"I am backing Mr. Hallowell in a company for which he is doing chemical research work. We are hatching eggs, out of the sh.e.l.l, so to speak. Also we are aging and rejuvenating arthropods and the like. So far we have declared no dividends. But we have hopes."
She gave a hysterical sob of relief. "Then it"s only business--not the girl at all!"
"Oh, yes, it"s the girl, too," replied he. "She"s an officer of the company. In fact, it was to make a place for her that I went into the enterprise originally." With an engaging air of frankness he inquired, "Anything more?"
She was gazing soberly, almost somberly, into the fire. "You"ll not be offended if I ask you one question?"
"Certainly not."
"Is there anything between you and--her?"