LINDA CONDON.
She walked to a street crossing, where she dropped the envelope into a letter-box on a lamppost, and returned to find Arnaud Hallet waiting for her. He said:
“Everyone agrees I'm serious, but actually you are worse than the Assembly.” They went through the dining-room to the garden, and sat on the stone step of a deep window. It was quite late, perhaps eleven o'clock, and the fireflies, slowly rising into the night, had vanished. Linda was cool and remote and grave, silently repeating and weighing the phrases of her letter to Pleydon.
She realized that Arnaud Hallet was coming to like her a very great deal; but she gave this only the slightest attention. She liked him, really, and that dismissed him from serious consideration. Anyhow, in spite of the perfection of his manner, Arnaud's careless dress displeased her: his shoes and the shoulders of his coat were perpetually dusty, and his hair, growing scant, was always ruffled. Linda understood that he was highly intellectual, and frequently contributed historical and genealogical papers to societies and bulletins, but compared with Dodge Pleydon's brilliant personality and reputation, Pleydon surrounded by the Susanna Nodas of life, Arnaud was as dingy as his shoes.
She wondered idly when the latter would actually try to love her. He was holding her hand and it might well be to-night. Linda decided that he would do it delicately; and when, almost immediately, he kissed her, she was undisturbed. No, surprisingly, it had been quite pleasant. He hadn't mussed her ribbons, nor her spirit, a particle. In addition he did not at once become impossible and urgently sentimental; there was even a shade of amusement on his heavy face.
“You appear to take a lot for granted,” he complained.
“I'd been wondering when it would happen,” she admitted coolly.
“It always does, then?”
“Usually I stop it,” she continued. “I don't believe I'll ever like being kissed. Can you tell me why? No one ever has; they all think they can bring me around to it.”
“And to them,” he added.
“But they end by being furious at me. I've been sworn at and called dreadful names. Sometimes they're only silly. One cried; I hated that the most.”
“Do you mean that you were sorry for him?”
“Oh, dear, no. Why should I be? He looked so odious all smeared with tears.”
Arnaud Hallet returned promptly: “Linda, you're a little beast.” To counteract his rude speech he kissed her again. “This,” he said with less security, “threatens to become a habit. I thought, at forty-five, that I was safely by the island of sirens, but I'll be on the rocks before I know it.”
She laughed with the cool remoteness of running water.
“I wonder you haven't been murdered,” he proceeded, “in a moonless garden by an elderly lawyer. Do you ever think of the lyric day when, preceded by a flock of bridesmaids and other flowery pagan truck, you'll meet justice?”
“Marriage?” she asked. “But of course. I have everything perfectly planned—”
“Then, my dear Linda, describe him.”
“Very straight,” she said, “with beautiful polished shoes and brushed hair.”
“You ought to have no trouble finding that. Any number of my friends have one—to open the door and take your things. I might arrange a very satisfactory introduction for everybody concerned—a steady man well on his way to preside over the pantry and table.”
“You're not as funny as usual,” Linda decided critically. “That, too, disturbs me,” he replied. “It looks even more unpromising for the near future.”