An impulse which was hardly more than a consuming interest in humanity--in the varied phenomena of life--caused him to draw quickly nearer.
"You say that because you"ve "arrived,"" he declared. "You"ve "arrived"
in love as your friend has in literature. The probationary stage after all is the only one worth while, and you"ve gone too far beyond it."
"I"ve gone too far beyond everything," she protested, laughing. "I"m a graduate of the world. Now Laura--"
The name recalled his thoughts and he repeated it while she paused.
"Laura--it has a jolly sound--and upon my word I haven"t seen a woman in years who has had so much to say to me before I"ve met her. Do you know, I already like her--I like her smooth black hair, without any of your fussy undulations; I like her strong earnest look and the strength in her brow and chin; I even like the way she dresses--"
Gerty"s laugh pealed out, and he broke off with a movement of irritation. "Is it possible that Laura is an enchantress," she demanded, "and have I followed the wrong principle all my life? Has my honest intention to please men led me astray?"
"Oh, you may be funny at my expense if you choose," he retorted, "but I"ve had enough of fluff and feathers, and I like the natural way she wears her clothes--" Again he smoked in an abstracted silence, and then asked abruptly: "Will you take me some day to see her?"
She shook her head.
"Take you? No, you"ve missed your opportunity."
"But I"ll make another. Why not?"
"Because I tell you frankly she would hate you."
"My dear girl, she wouldn"t have a shadow of an excuse. No woman has ever hated me in my life."
"Then there"s no use seeking the experience. You"d just as well accept the fact at once that Laura couldn"t bear you--"
A laugh followed from the door while the words were still in the air, and turning quickly they saw Laura pausing upon the threshold.
"And pray what is it about Laura?" she asked in her cordial contralto voice. "A person who has borne living in the house with a flute may be said to have unlimited powers of endurance."
She moved forward and Kemper, while he sprang to his feet and stood waiting for the introduction, became swiftly aware that with her entrance the whole atmosphere had taken a fresher and a finer quality.
The sophistication of the world, the flippant irony of Gerty"s voice gave place immediately before her earnest dignity and before the look of large humanity which distinguished her so vitally from the women whom he knew. He felt her sincerity of purpose at the same instant that he felt Gerty"s shallowness and the artificial glamour of the hot-house air in which he had hardly drawn breath. There was an appeal in Laura"s face which he had never seen before--an expression which seemed to him to draw directly from the elemental pulse; and he felt suddenly that there were depths of consciousness which he had never sounded, vivid experiences which he had never even glimpsed. "She is different--but how is she different?" he asked himself, perplexed. "Is she simply a bigger personality, or is she really more of a woman than any woman I have ever known? What is it in her that speaks to me and what is it in myself that responds?" And it seemed to him both strange and wonderful that he should be drawn by an impulse which was not the impulse of love--that a woman should attract him through qualities which were independent of the allurement of s.e.x. A clean and perfectly sane satisfaction was the immediate result; he felt that he had grown larger in his own eyes--that the old Adam who had ruled over him so long had become suddenly dwarfed and insignificant. "To like a woman and yet not to make love to her," he repeated in his thoughts. "By Jove, it will be something decent, something really worth while." Then he remembered that he had never known intimately a woman of commanding intellect, and the novelty inspired him with the spirit of fresh adventure.
She had bowed to him over the large m.u.f.f she carried, and he spoke lightly though his awakened interest showed in his face and voice. "I was the unfortunate subject of Gerty"s decision," he said. "Is there no appeal from it?"
Her answering smile was one of indifferent kindliness; and he liked, even while he resented her sincerity of manner. "Appeal! and to whom?"
she enquired.
"To you--to your mercy," he laughed.
She glanced at Gerty with a look which hardly simulated a curiosity she apparently did not feel.
"But why should you need my mercy?" she demanded, as she sat down on a little sofa heaped with cushions.
His gaze, after resting a moment on the smooth black hair beneath her velvet hat, turned to the exquisite shining waves which encircled Gerty"s head.
"Ask my cousin," he advised with merriment.
Whatever Gerty"s reason for not caring to bring them together may have been, she concealed it now beneath a ready acceptance of the situation.
"Oh, he tried to make me promise to take him to see you," she explained, "but I"ve told him you"d show him no quarter because he hasn"t read your poems."
Laura raised her eyes to his face, and he had again the sensation of looking into an unutterable personality.
"I"m glad you haven"t read them," she rejoined, "for now you won"t be able to talk to me about them."
"So you don"t like to have one talk about them?"
She met his question with direct simplicity. "About my verse? I shouldn"t like to have you do it."
"And why not I?" he demanded, laughing.
"Oh, I don"t know," she returned, her eyes lighting with the humour of her frankness, "can one explain? But I"m perfectly sure that it"s not the kind of thing you"d like. There"s no action in it."
"So Gerty has told you that I"m a strenuous creature?"
"Perhaps. I don"t remember." She turned to Gerty, looking down upon her with a tenderness that suffused her face with colour. "What was it that you told me, dearest?"
"What did I tell you?" repeated Gerty, still clasping Laura"s hand. "Oh, it must have been that he agrees with some dreadful person who said that poetry was the insanity of prose."
Laura laughed as she glanced back at him, and he contrasted her deep contralto notes with Gerty"s flute-like soprano.
"Well, he may not be right, but he is with the majority," she said.
Her indifference piqued him into the spirit of opposition, and he felt an immediate impulse to compel her reluctant interest--to arouse her admiration of the very qualities she now disdained.
"Well, I take my poetry where I find it," he rejoined, "and that"s mostly in life and not in books."
From the quick turn of her head, the instant"s lifting of her emotional reserve, he saw that the words had arrested her imagination--that for the first time since her entrance she had really taken in the fact of his existence as an individual.
"Then you are not with the majority, but you are right!" she exclaimed.
"Is it not possible to be both?" he asked, pleased almost more than he would admit by the quickening of her attention.
"I think not," she answered seriously, "don"t you?"
"I never think," he laughed with his eyes upon hers, "I live."
The animation, which was like the glow from an inner illumination, shone in her face, and he thought, as Trent had thought before him, that her soul must burn like a golden flame within her--a flame that reached toward life, knowledge and the veiled wonders of experience.
"And so would I if I were a man," she said.
She rose, clasping the furs at her throat, then folding Gerty in her arms she kissed her cheek.
"I stopped for a moment to look at you, nothing more," she confessed.
"It was a choice between looking at you and at the Rembrandt in the Metropolitan, and I chose you." As she held Gerty from her for an instant and then drew her into her embrace again, Kemper saw that her delight in her friend"s beauty was almost a rapture, that her friendship possessed something of a religious fervour.
"Do stay with me," pleaded Gerty; "I want you--I need you."
"But you dine out."