"I used to like a great many things which bore me now."
"Yes, you used to like me," he retorted gaily.
She had so confidently expected the remark, had left so frank an opening for it, that while she watched him from beneath languid eyelids a little cynical quiver disturbed her lips. The game was as old as the Garden of Eden, she had played it well or ill from her cradle, and at last she had begun to grow a trifle weary. She had found the wisdom which is hidden at the core of all Dead Sea fruit, and the bitter taste of it was still in her mouth. The world for her was a world of make-believe--of lies so futile that their pretty embroidered shams barely covered the ugly truths beneath, and, though she had pinned her faith upon falsehood and had made her sacrifice to the little G.o.ds, there were moments still when the undelivered soul within her awoke and stirred as a child stirs in the womb. Even as she went back to the game anew, she was conscious that it would be a battle of meaningless words, of shallow insincerities--yet she went back, nevertheless, before the disgust the thought awoke had pa.s.sed entirely from among her sensations.
"I believe I did," she confessed with a charming shrug.
"But you turned against me in the end--women always do," he lamented merrily, as he flicked away the ashes of his cigarette. Then, with a perceptible start of recollection, he paused a moment and leaned forward to look at her more closely. "By the way, I had a shot at your friend to-day," he said, "the lady who looks like an old picture and does verse. Why on earth did she take to poetry?" he demanded impatiently.
"I hate it--it"s all sheer insanity."
"Well, some few madmen have thought otherwise," remarked Gerty, adding immediately, "and so you met Laura. Oh, you two! It was the irresistible force meeting the immovable body. What happened?"
He regarded her quite gravely while his cigarette burned like a little red eye between his fingers.
"Nothing," he responded at last. "I didn"t meet her--I merely glimpsed her. She has a pair of eyes--you didn"t tell me."
Gerty nodded.
"And I forgot to mention as well that she has a nose and a mouth and a chin. What an oversight."
"Oh, I didn"t bother about the rest," he said, and she wondered if he could be half in earnest or if he were wholly jesting, "but, by Jove, I went overboard in her eyes and never touched bottom."
For a moment Gerty stared at him in blank amazement, in the midst of which she promptly told herself that henceforth she would be prepared for any eccentricities of which the male mind might be capable. A hot flush mantled her cheek, and she spoke in a voice which had a new and womanly ring of decision.
"You would not like her," she said, "and she would hate you."
With an amused exclamation he replaced his coffee cup upon the table.
"Then she"d be a very foolish woman," he observed.
"She believes in all the things that you scoff at--she believes in the soul, in people, and in love--"
He made a protest of mock dismay. "My dear girl, I"ve been too hard hit by love not to believe in it. On the contrary, I believe in it so firmly that I think the only sure cure for it is marriage."
At her swift movement of aversion his laughing glance made a jest of the words, and she smiled back at him with the fantastic humour which had become almost her natural manner. It was a habit of his to treat sportively even the subjects which he reverenced, and in reality she had sometimes felt him to be less of a sober cynic than herself. He took his pleasures where he found them, and there was a touch of pathos in the generous eagerness with which he was ready to provide as well for the pleasures of others. If he lacked imagination she had learned by now that he did not fail in its sister virtue, sympathy, and his keen gray eyes, which expressed so perfectly a gay derision, were not slow, she knew, to warm into a smiling tenderness.
"Laura is the most earnest creature alive," she said after a moment.
"Is that so? Then I presume she lacks a sense of humour."
"She has a sense of honour at any rate."
With a laugh he settled his figure more comfortably in his chair, and while she watched the movement, a little fascinated by its easy freedom, she felt a sudden impulse to reach out and touch his broad, strong shoulders as she might have touched the shoulders of a statue. Were they really as hard as bronze, she wondered, or was that suggestion of latent power, of slumbering energy, as deceptive as the caressing glance he bent upon her? The glance meant nothing she was aware--he would have regarded her in much the same way had Perry been at her side, would have shone quite as affectionately, perhaps, upon her mother. Yet, in spite of her worldly knowledge, she felt herself yielding to it as to a delicate flattery. Her eyes were still on him, and presently he caught her gaze and held it by a look which, for all its fervour, had an edge of biting irony. There was a meaning, a mystery in his regard, but his words when at last they came sounded almost empty.
"Oh, that"s well enough in its way," he said, "but as a safeguard there"s no virtue alive that can stand against a sense of humour. An instinct for the ridiculous will keep any man from going to the devil."
She shot her defiant merriment into his face. "Has it kept you?"
"I?--Oh, I wasn"t bound that way, you know--but why do you ask?"
For a breath she hesitated, then, remembering her mystification of an instant ago, she felt a swift desire to punish him for something which even to herself she could not express--for too sharp a p.r.i.c.k of unsatisfied curiosity, or was it for too intense a moment of uncertainty?
"Oh, one hears, you know," she replied indifferently.
"One hears! And what is it that one hears?"
His voice was hard, almost angry, and she despised herself because the fierce sound of it made her suddenly afraid.
"Do you know what a man said to me the other day," she went on with a cool insolence before which he became suddenly quiet. "Whom the G.o.ds destroy they first infatuate--with an opera singer."
She delivered the words straight from the shoulder, and as she finished he rose from his chair and stood looking angrily down upon her.
"Did you let me come here for _this?_" he demanded.
"O Arnold, Arnold!" the gayety rang back to her voice, and she made a charming little face of affected terror. "If you"re going to be a bear I"ll run away."
She stretched out her hand, and he held it for an instant in his own, while he fell back impatiently into his chair.
"The truth is that I was clean mad about her," he said, "about Madame Alta--but it"s over now, and I abominate everything that has ever set foot on the stage."
"Was she really beautiful?" she enquired curiously.
He laughed sharply. "Beautiful! She was flesh--if you mean that."
An angry sigh escaped him, and Gerty lighted a fresh cigarette and gave it to him with a soothing gesture. The nervous movements which were characteristic of him became more frequent, and she found herself wondering that they should increase rather than diminish the impression of virile force. For a while he smoked in silence; then, with his eyes still turned away from her, he asked in a changed voice.
"Tell me about your friend--she interests me."
"She interests you! Laura?"
"There"s something in her that I like," he pursued, smiling at her exclamation. "She looks human, natural, real. By Jove, she looks as if she were capable of big emotions--as if, too, you could like her without making love. She"s something new."
Gerty"s amazement was so sincere that she only stared at him, while her red lips parted slightly in a breathless and perfectly unaffected surprise. Something new! Her wonder faded slowly, and she told herself that now at last she understood. So he was still what he had always been--an impatient seeker after fresh sensations.
"I thought you were too much like Perry to care about her," she said.
His amused glance made the remark appear suddenly ridiculous. "I"m different from Perry in one thing at least," he retorted. "You didn"t marry me."
"Well, I dare say it"s a good thing you never gave me the chance," she tossed back lightly. "I don"t let Perry rave, you know, even over Laura.
Not that I"m unduly jealous, but that I"m easily bored."
"I can"t imagine you jealous," he commented, keeping as usual close to the intimate intention.
"And of Perry! I should hope not!" Her gesture was one of amused indifference. "Jealousy is the darling virtue of the savage, and I may not be a saint, but at least I"m civilized. Give me food and a warm fire and clothes to my back, and I"m quite content to let the pa.s.sions go."
"Even love?" he asked, still smiling.
She shrugged her shoulders--gracefully as few women can. "Love among the rest--I don"t care--why should I? Make me comfortable."