XX
The cold weather placed a smooth black floor on Lake Carnegie. George went down one evening with the Baillys. They brought Betty Alston, who was just home from New York and had dined with them. A round moon smiled above the row of solemn and vigilant poplars along the canal bank. The shadows of the trees made you catch your breath as if on the edge of perilous pitfalls.
Going down through the woods they passed Allen. Even in that yellow-splashed darkness George recognized the bony figure.
"Been skating?" he called.
"Hello, Morton! No, I don't skate."
"Then," George laughed, "why don't you smash the ice?"
Allen laughed back mirthlessly, but didn't answer; and, as they went on, Betty wanted to know what it was all about. George told her of Allen's visit.
"But congenial people," she said, "will always gather together. It would be dreadful to have one's friends arbitrarily chosen. You'll go to a club with your friends."
"But Allen says the poor men can't afford it," he answered. "I'm one of the poor men."
"You'll always find a way to do what you want," she said, confidently.
But when they were on the lake the question of affording the things one wanted slipped between them again.
George had a fancy that Mrs. Bailly guided her awkward husband away from Betty and him. Why? At least it was pleasant to be alone with Betty, gliding along near the bank, sometimes clasping hands at a half-seen, doubtful stretch. Betty spoke of it.
"Where are my guardians?"
"Let's go a little farther," he urged. "We'll find them easily enough."
It didn't worry her much.
"Why did you come back so soon?" she asked.
He hesitated. He had hoped to avoid such questions.
"I haven't been away."
She glanced up, surprised.
"You mean you've been in Princeton through the holiday?"
"Yes, I feel I ought to go easy with what little I have."
"I knew you were working your way through," she said, "but I never guessed it meant as much denial as that."
"Don't worry," he laughed, "I'll make money next summer."
"I wish I'd known. And none of your friends thought!"
"Why should they? They're mostly too rich."
"That's wrong."
"Are you driving me into Allen's camp?" he asked. "You can't; for I expect to be rich myself, some day. Any man can, if he goes about it in the right way. Maybe Allen doubts his power, and that's the reason he's against money and the pleasant things it buys. Does it make any difference to you, my being poor for a time?"
"Why should it?" she asked, warmly.
"Allen," he said, "couldn't understand your skating with me."
Why not tell Betty the rest in this frozen and romantic solitude they shared? He decided not. He had risked enough for the present. When she turned around he didn't try to hold her, skating swiftly back at her side, aware of a danger in such solitude; charging himself with a scarcely definable disloyalty to his conception of Sylvia.