"OH!... WHY DO YOU DO THIS?"
Who knows what trusting heart first voiced that immemorial question? Charles Garrott, at least, was not the first gentleman on earth to fail to utter promptly the one satisfactory commentary on his behavior. Miss Angela made that little, gentle note of interrogation which cannot be written, and then she said again:—
"Tell me—why do you?"
Then it was as if the intrinsic pointedness of that query penetrated the man, suddenly and sharply. It was the mere force of iteration, no doubt; but all at once the soft voice seemed possessed of a certain insistence, tinctured with a certain definite expectation, you might say. Now that Charles stopped to think of it, why was he doing this?
The young man's arms fell, as if something had burned them. He rose abruptly and strode away to the mantelpiece, where, however, the Latrobe heater spoiled any hope of an effective pose.
If he meant thus to signify that the little episode was closed and done with, life, unluckily, was not quite so simple as that. The pretty Home-Maker, having gazed at his back- or side-view a moment, as if bewildered, said in an uncertain voice:—
"I—I don't understand you at all. Why did you do that?"
Putting down the impulse to bolt, and the even more astonishing impulse to return to that fatal sofa, Charles Garrott braced himself to reply. In this effort he was handicapped by emotions altogether unknown to most young men who sit upon sofas. For example: What would the lady in Sweden have to say to this little affair?
He confronted a fact which he had temporarily lost sight of: that he who pays these tributes must pay for them to the full. Half of him might feel resentful and furious, but it was clear that the whole of him, the net Charles, must cut a sorry figure for a while. Half of him might be crying out, stern as science itself: "Come, girl, be honest! Don't go about dropping matches into gunpowder, and then pretend to be surprised at the explosion." But the net Charles, brightly flushed, was speaking lamely as a schoolboy:—
"Well! Do you think I could be blamed—exactly? It—it seemed such an awfully natural thing to do. You—ah—it seemed I—I couldn't do anything else!..."
"I see," said the girl slowly.
"Ah—you—you're a very kissable person, you must know—"
"And do you always go about kissing people you think are kissable?"
The young man shrank as from a blow. Not looking once in her direction, he did not note that she had spoken with a quivering lip. With a great effort at lightness, he stammered:—
"Well, hardly! It must be that I don't often meet people who—who are as k-k-kissable as you—"
"I suppose I ought to feel flattered."
There was a miserable silence.
"I was mistaken in you," continued the Nice Girl's stricken voice. "I—I trusted you. I supposed you were too honorable—I didn't think—"
That word seemed to touch him to the quick. He spoke with desperate stiffness.
"I am honorable, I hope. Miss Flower—aren't you taking this too—too seriously, perhaps? After all, you—"
She astonished him by bursting into tears.
And all modernity became as nothing then, and Charles was a simple man, horrified by the sight of woman's grief. Now his abasement became complete; now he groveled most properly; never, he vowed, would he cease to censure himself most severely for this Occurrence. He wheedled, he implored, he cajoled. But, of course, all this but made the matter worse, threw his wary, inexcusable omissions into sharper and sharper relief. And presently Miss Angela referred to him as brutal (did she not pause even after that, in a sort of expectant way?) and then ended the tragedy by begging him to leave her, her fatally ringed hands held fast before her eyes.
No such conclusion to the evening of wholesome pleasure could have been devised by the wit of fiction-writers. Charles gathered up his hat and coat like a thief, and let himself gently out into the night.
VIII
He turned in at the Green Park, in the still night, and stood gazing with bitterness at a dim gigantic Citizen, who rose in bronze at the intersection of two walkways. The Citizen gazed back with no bitterness at all; but then, he was dead.
Charles Garrott, being very much alive, was thinking cadlike thoughts with clarity and vigor. In the romances, men who won a maiden's sweet kiss instantly besought her to name the day; failing that, they were cads. But Charles was resolved to fail that, and he was struggling determinedly not to feel a cad. He simply did not consider that Miss Angela's kiss had such a pricelessness, entailing cosmic responsibilities. Why was her kiss any sweeter than his own, to come right down to it?
Now pure remorse had faded: self-interest, outraged self-respect, fought to have their say. Indeed, Miss Angela herself could not well feel more mortified over those unimagined salutes than he, the New Man, did. And it was as if his humiliation had destroyed all that restraining sense of a bond here, and the brutal Charles was free now for a frank facing of his new reactions.
"Well, I won't marry her! I won't," said he to the calm Citizen. "I'll call myself names for her, yes; I'll send her bonbons—flowers—that sort of thing. I'll land Donald for her—that's a thought! I'll get her invited to the Thursday German. But marry her!... No, the kindest thing would be never to see her again."
