"Well, then, confound it--no! no! no!"
"Oh, yes, you do, Penny. Go ahead now. Don"t deny it just because you are talking to me. Own up, now, Penny. You do think she is beautiful?"
"Well," said Pennoyer, in a dull roar of irritation, "do you?"
Florinda walked in silence, her eyes upon the yellow flashes which lights sent to the pavement. In the end she said, "Yes."
"Yes, what?" asked Pennoyer sharply.
"Yes, she--yes, she is--beautiful."
"Well, then?" cried Pennoyer, abruptly closing the discussion.
Florinda announced something as a fact. "Billie thinks his eyes of her."
"How do you know he does?"
"Don"t scold at me, Penny. You--you----"
"I"m not scolding at you. There! What a goose you are, Splutter! Don"t, for heaven"s sake, go to whimpering on the street! I didn"t say anything to make you feel that way. Come, pull yourself together."
"I"m not whimpering."
"No, of course not; but then you look as if you were on the edge of it.
What a little idiot!"
CHAPTER x.x.xII.
When the snow fell upon the clashing life of the city, the exiled stones, beaten by myriad strange feet, were told of the dark, silent forests where the flakes swept through the hemlocks and swished softly against the boulders.
In his studio Hawker smoked a pipe, clasping his knee with thoughtful, interlocked fingers. He was gazing sourly at his finished picture. Once he started to his feet with a cry of vexation. Looking back over his shoulder, he swore an insult into the face of the picture. He paced to and fro, smoking belligerently and from time to time eying it. The helpless thing remained upon the easel, facing him.
Hollanden entered and stopped abruptly at sight of the great scowl.
"What"s wrong now?" he said.
Hawker gestured at the picture. "That dunce of a thing. It makes me tired. It isn"t worth a hang. Blame it!"
"What?" Hollanden strode forward and stood before the painting with legs apart, in a properly critical manner. "What? Why, you said it was your best thing."
"Aw!" said Hawker, waving his arms, "it"s no good! I abominate it! I didn"t get what I wanted, I tell you. I didn"t get what I wanted. That?"
he shouted, pointing thrust-way at it--"that? It"s vile! Aw! it makes me weary."
"You"re in a nice state," said Hollanden, turning to take a critical view of the painter. "What has got into you now? I swear, you are more kinds of a chump!"
Hawker crooned dismally: "I can"t paint! I can"t paint for a d.a.m.n! I"m no good. What in thunder was I invented for, anyhow, Hollie?"
"You"re a fool," said Hollanden. "I hope to die if I ever saw such a complete idiot! You give me a pain. Just because she don"t----"
"It isn"t that. She has nothing to do with it, although I know well enough--I know well enough----"
"What?"
"I know well enough she doesn"t care a hang for me. It isn"t that. It is because--it is because I can"t paint. Look at that thing over there!
Remember the thought and energy I---- d.a.m.n the thing!"
"Why, did you have a row with her?" asked Hollanden, perplexed. "I didn"t know----"
"No, of course you didn"t know," cried Hawker, sneering; "because I had no row. It isn"t that, I tell you. But I know well enough"--he shook his fist vaguely--"that she don"t care an old tomato can for me. Why should she?" he demanded with a curious defiance. "In the name of Heaven, why should she?"
"I don"t know," said Hollanden; "I don"t know, I"m sure. But, then, women have no social logic. This is the great blessing of the world.
There is only one thing which is superior to the multiplicity of social forms, and that is a woman"s mind--a young woman"s mind. Oh, of course, sometimes they are logical, but let a woman be so once, and she will repent of it to the end of her days. The safety of the world"s balance lies in woman"s illogical mind. I think----"
"Go to blazes!" said Hawker. "I don"t care what you think. I am sure of one thing, and that is that she doesn"t care a hang for me!"
"I think," Hollanden continued, "that society is doing very well in its work of bravely lawing away at Nature; but there is one immovable thing--a woman"s illogical mind. That is our safety. Thank Heaven, it----"
"Go to blazes!" said Hawker again.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
As Hawker again entered the room of the great windows he glanced in sidelong bitterness at the chandelier. When he was seated he looked at it in open defiance and hatred.
Men in the street were shovelling at the snow. The noise of their instruments sc.r.a.ping on the stones came plainly to Hawker"s ears in a harsh chorus, and this sound at this time was perhaps to him a _miserere_.
"I came to tell you," he began, "I came to tell you that perhaps I am going away."
"Going away!" she cried. "Where?"
"Well, I don"t know--quite. You see, I am rather indefinite as yet. I thought of going for the winter somewhere in the Southern States. I am decided merely this much, you know--I am going somewhere. But I don"t know where. "Way off, anyhow."
"We shall be very sorry to lose you," she remarked. "We----"
"And I thought," he continued, "that I would come and say "adios" now for fear that I might leave very suddenly. I do that sometimes. I"m afraid you will forget me very soon, but I want to tell you that----"
"Why," said the girl in some surprise, "you speak as if you were going away for all time. You surely do not mean to utterly desert New York?"
"I think you misunderstand me," he said. "I give this important air to my farewell to you because to me it is a very important event. Perhaps you recollect that once I told you that I cared for you. Well, I still care for you, and so I can only go away somewhere--some place "way off--where--where---- See?"
"New York is a very large place," she observed.