"Where is--where is she now?" Miss Winthrop demanded.
"She went abroad in June to stay until September."
"And left you here?"
"Of course. I couldn"t go."
"And left you here?" she repeated.
"That"s what you get for being in business," he explained. "We had planned to go together--on our honeymoon."
The air was getting chill. She shivered.
"Aren"t you warm enough?" he asked.
He started to remove his jacket to throw over her shoulders, but she objected.
"I"m all right."
"Better put it on."
"No; I don"t want it."
They were silent a moment, and then she said, almost complainingly:--
"As long as you couldn"t go, why didn"t she stay here with you?"
The question startled him.
"In town?" he exclaimed.
"Why didn"t she stay here and look after you?"
"Why, she couldn"t do that when she was going abroad."
"Then she had no business to go abroad," she answered fiercely.
"Now, look here," he put in. "We aren"t married, you know. We"re only engaged."
"But _why_ aren"t you married?"
"We couldn"t afford it."
"That isn"t true. You could afford it on half what you"re earning."
He shook his head. "You don"t know."
"She should have married you, and if she wanted more she should have stayed and helped you get more."
"And helped?" he exclaimed.
She was looking up at the stars again. They were getting steadier.
"It"s the only way a woman can show--she cares."
Then she rose. She was shivering again.
"I think we"d better go now."
"But we haven"t been here a half-hour," he protested.
"We"ve been here quite a long while," she answered. "Please, I want to go home now."
CHAPTER XXI
IN THE DARK
An hour or so later Miss Winthrop lay in her bed, where, with the door tight locked and the gas out, she could feel just the way she felt like feeling and it was n.o.body"s business. She cried because she wished to cry. She cried because it was the easiest and most satisfactory way she knew of relieving the tenseness in her throat.
She burrowed her face in the pillow and cried hard, and then turned over on her pig-tails and sobbed awhile. It did not make any difference, here in the dark, whether the tears made lines down her face or not--whether or not they made her eyes red, and, worst of all, her nose red.
From sobbing, Miss Winthrop dwindled to sniveling, and there she stopped. She was not the kind to snivel very long--even by herself.
She did not like the sound of it. So she took her wadded handkerchief and jammed it once into each eye and jabbed once at each cheek, and then, holding it tight in her clenched fist, made up her mind to stop.
For a minute or two an occasional sob broke through spasmodically; but finally even that ceased, and she was able to stare at the ceiling quite steadily. By that time she was able to call herself a little fool, which was a very good beginning for rational thinking.
There was considerable material upon which to base a pretty fair argument along this line. Admitting that Don Pendleton was what she had been crying about,--a purely hypothetical a.s.sumption for the sake of a beginning,--she was able to start with the premise that a woman was a fool for crying about any man. Coming down to concrete facts, she found herself supplied with even less comforting excuses. If she had been living of late in a little fool"s paradise, why, she had made it for herself. She could not accuse him of having any other part in it than that of merely being there. If she went back a month, or three months, or almost a year, she saw herself either taking the initiative or, what was just as bad, pa.s.sively submitting. Of course, her motive had been merely to help him in an impersonal sort of way. She had seen that he needed help, but she had not dreamed the reason for it.
She had no warning that he had been deserted by her who should have helped him. She had no way of knowing about this other. Surely that ignorance was not her fault.
Here is where she jabbed her handkerchief again into each eye and lay back on her pig-tails long enough to get a fresh grip upon herself.
Her skin grew hot, then cold, then hot again. It really had all been more the fault of this other than Mr. Pendleton"s. She had no business to go away and leave him for some one else to care for. She had no business to leave him, anyway. She ought to have married him away back when he first went to work to make a fortune for her. Why didn"t she take the money it cost to go to Europe and spend it on him? She had let a whole year go wasted, when she had such an opportunity as this!
Here was a house waiting for her; here was Don waiting for her; and she had gone to Europe!
To put one"s self in another"s place--in a place of so delicate a nature as this--is a dangerous business, but Miss Winthrop did not do it deliberately. Lying there in the dark, her imagination swept her on. The thought that remained uppermost in her mind was the chance this other girl had missed. She would never have it again. In the fall Don would receive his raise and be sent out to sell, and after that his career was a.s.sured. It remained only for him to hold steady--an easy matter after the first year--and his income was bound to increase by thousand-dollar jumps until he won his ten thousand and more. And with that there was not very much left, as far as she could see, for a woman to do. The big fight would be all over. A woman could no longer claim a partnership; she would simply be bought.
If last fall she had had the chance of that other, she would have had him out selling a month ago. Give her a year or two, and she would have him in that firm or some other. She could do it. She felt the power that minute.
This raised a new question. What was she to do from now on? Until now she had had the excuse of ignorance; but there was still another month before Don"s fiancee would be back. And this month would count a whole lot to him. It was the deciding month. Farnsworth had been watching him closely, and had about made up his mind; but he was still on the alert for any break. He had seen men go so far and then break.
So had she. It was common enough. She herself had every confidence in Don, but she was doubtful about how long it was wise to leave even him alone. Men could not stand being alone as well as women. They had not the same experience. It took a special kind of nerve to be alone and remain straight.
Well, supposing he did break, what was that to her, now that she knew about this other? Here was a perfectly fair and just question. The man had made his selection and given over his future into the care of the woman of his choice, and she alone was responsible. There could be no dispute about this. It was a fair question; and yet, as soon as she framed it, she recognized it as unworthy of her. Furthermore, it led to an extremely dangerous deduction--namely, that her interest, after all, was not entirely impersonal; for if it were what difference did one woman or twenty other women make in her relations with him? To put the matter bluntly, she was acting exactly as if she were in love with him herself!
When Miss Winthrop faced that astounding fact she felt exactly as if her heart stopped beating for a full minute. Then it started again as if trying to make up for the lapse in a couple of breaths. She gasped for breath and, throwing off the bedclothes, jumped up and lighted the gas. Here was something to be met in the light. But, as soon as she caught sight of her flushed cheeks and her staring eyes, she hurriedly turned out the gas again and climbed back into bed. Here she lay like some trapped thing, panting and helpless. Over and over again she whispered, "I"m not! I"m not!" as if some one were bending over her and taunting her with the statement. Then she whispered, "It isn"t true! Oh, it isn"t true!" She denied it fiercely--vehemently. She threw an arm over her eyes even there in the dark.
It was such an absurd accusation! If she had been one of those silly, helpless creatures with nothing else to do in life but fall in love, it might have had some point; but here she was, a self-respecting, self-supporting girl who had seen enough of men to know distinctly better than to do anything so foolish. It had been the confidence born of this knowledge that had allowed her from the start to take an impersonal interest in the man. And the proof of this was that she had so conducted herself that he had not fallen in love with her.