After a moment, without looking up: "You have been very, very nice to me-- in the nicest possible way," she said.... "I am not going to forget it easily--even if I might wish to."
"I can never forget _you!_... I d-don"t want to."
The sparkling pendant escaped her fingers; she picked it up again and spoke as though gravely addressing it:
"Some day somewhere," she said, looking at the jewel, "perhaps chance-- the hazard of life--may bring us to--togeth--to acquaintance--a more formal acquaintance than this.... I hope so. This has been a little-- irregular, and perhaps you had better not wait for my maid.... I hope we may meet--sometime."
"I hope so, too," he managed to say, with so little fervor and so successful an imitation of her politely detached interest in convention that she raised her eyes. They dropped immediately, because his quiet voice and speech scarcely conformed to the uncontrolled protest in his eyes.
For a moment she stood, pa.s.sing the golden links through her white fingers like a young novice with a rosary. Steps on the stairs disturbed them; the recessional had begun; four solemn persons filed out the area gate. At the same moment, suave and respectful, her butler pro tem.
presented himself at the doorway:
"Luncheon is served, madam."
"Thank you." She looked uncertainly at Brown, hesitated, flushed a trifle.
"I will stay here and admit the plumber and then--then--I"ll g-go," he said with a heartbroken smile.
"I suppose you took the opportunity to lunch when you went out?" she said. Her inflection made it a question.
Without answering he stepped back to allow her to pa.s.s. She moved forward, turned, undecided.
"_Have_ you lunched?"
"Please don"t feel that you ought to ask me," he began, and checked himself as the vivid pink deepened in her cheeks. Then she freed herself of embarra.s.sment with a little laugh.
"Considering," she said, "that we have been chasing cats on the back fences together and that, subsequently, you dug me out of the coal in my own cellar, I can"t believe it is very dreadful if I ask you to luncheon with me.... Is it?"
"It is ador--it is," he corrected himself firmly, "exceedingly civil of you to ask me!"
"Then--will you?" almost timidly.
"I will. I shall not pretend any more. I"d rather lunch with you than be President of this Republic."
The butler pro tem. seated her.
"You see," she said, "a place had already been laid for you." And with the faintest trace of malice in her voice: "Perhaps your butler had his orders to lay two covers. Had he?"
"From me?" he protested, reddening.
"You don"t suspect _me_, do you?" she asked, adorably mischievous. Then glancing over the ma.s.ses of flowers in the center and at the corners of the lace cloth: "This is deliciously pretty. But you are either dreadfully and habitually extravagant or you believe I am. Which is it?"
"I think both are true," he said, laughing.
And a little while later when he returned from the bas.e.m.e.nt after admitting Mr. Quinn, the plumber:
"Do you know that this is a most heavenly luncheon?" she said, greeting his return with delightfully fearless eyes. "Such Astrakan caviar! Such salad! Everything I care for most. And how on earth you guessed I can"t imagine.... I"m beginning to think you are rather wonderful."
They lifted the long, slender gla.s.ses of iced Ceylon tea and regarded one another over the frosty rims--a long, curious glance from her; a straight gaze from him, which she decided not to sustain too long.
Later, when she gave the signal, they rose as though they had often dined together, and moved leisurely out through the dim, shrouded drawing-rooms where, in the golden dusk, the odor of camphor hung.
She had taken a great cl.u.s.ter of dewy Bride"s roses from the centerpiece, and as she walked forward, sedately youthful, beside him, her fresh, young face brooded over the fragrance of the ma.s.sed petals.
"Sweet--how sweet!" she murmured to herself, and as they reached the end of the vista she half turned to face him, dreamily, listless, confident.
They looked at one another, she with chin brushing the roses.
"The strangest of all," she said, "is that it _seems_ all right--and--and we _know_ that it is all quite wrong.... Had you better go?"
"Unless I ought to wait and make sure your maid does not fail you....
Shall I?" he asked evenly.
She did not answer. He drew a linen-swathed armchair toward her; she absently seated herself and lay back, caressing the roses with delicate lips and chin.
Twice she looked up at him, standing there by the boarded windows.
Sunshine filtered through the latticework at the top--enough for them to see each other as in a dull afterglow.
"I wonder how soon my maid will come," she mused, dropping the loose roses on her knees. "If she is going to be very long about it perhaps-- perhaps you might care to find a chair--if you have decided to wait."
He drew one from a corner and seated himself, pulses hammering his throat.
Through the stillness of the house sounded at intervals the clink of gla.s.s from the pantry. Other sounds from above indicated the plumber"s progress from floor to floor.
"Do you realize," she said impulsively, "how _very_ nice you have been to me? What a perfectly horrid position I might have been in, with poor Clarence on the back fence! And suppose I had dared follow him alone to the cellar? I--I might have been there yet--up to my neck in coal?"
She gazed into s.p.a.ce with considerable emotion.
"And now," she said, "I am safe here in my own home. I have lunched divinely, a maid is on the way to me, Clarence remains somewhere safe indoors, Mr. Quinn is flitting from faucet to faucet, the electric light and the telephone will be in working order before very long--and it is _all_ due to you!"
"I--I did a few things I almost w-wish I hadn"t," stammered Brown, "b-because I can"t, somehow, decently t-tell you how tremendously I--I--" He stuck fast.
"What?"
"It would look as though I were presuming on a t-trifling service rendered, and--oh, I can"t say it; I want to, but I can"t."
"Say what? Please, I don"t mind what you are--are going to say."
"It"s--it"s that I----"
"Y-es?" in soft encouragement.
"W-want to know you most tremendously now. I don"t want to wait several years for chance and hazard."
"O-h!" as though the information conveyed a gentle shock to her. Her low- breathed exclamation nearly finished Brown.
"I knew you"d think it unpardonable for me--at such a time--to venture to--to--ask--say--express--convey----"
"Why do you--how can I--where could we--" She recovered herself resolutely. "I do not think we ought to take advantage of an accident like this.... Do you? Besides, probably, in the natural course of social events----"