"I'm very glad," said Ray, earnestly. "What is it?"
"A house at Pomantic. Rather a shoddy kind of house,—flashy, I mean, and ridiculously grand; but it's work; and somebody has to build all sorts, you know. When I build my house—well, never mind! Holder has put this contract right into my hands to carry out. He'll step over and look round, once in a while, but I'm to have the care of it straight through,—stock, work, and all; and I'm to have half the profits. Isn't that high of Holder? He has his hands full, you know, at River Point. There's no end of building there, this year a whole street going up—with Mansard roofs, of course. Everything is going into this house that can go into a house; and to see that it gets in right will be—practice, anyhow."
Sunderline chattered on like a boy; almost like a girl, telling Ray what he was so glad of. And Ray listened, her cheek glowing; she was so glad to be told.
He had not said a word of this to Marion Kent that afternoon, when she had stopped him at her window, going by. He had stood there a few minutes, leaning against the white fence, and looking across the little door-yard, to answer the questions she asked him; about the Ingrahams, the questions were; but he did not offer to come nearer.
Marion was sewing on a rich silk dress, sea-green in color; it glistened as she shifted it with busy fingers under the light; it contrasted exquisitely with her fair, splendid hair, and the cream and rose of her full blonde complexion. It was a "platform dress," she told him, laughing; she was going with the Leverings on a reading and musical tour; they had got a little company together, and would give entertainments in the large country towns; perhaps go to some of the fashionable springs, or up among the mountain places; folks liked their amusements to come after them, from the cities; they were sure of audiences where people had nothing to do.
Marion was in high spirits. She felt as if she had the world before her. She would travel, at any rate; whether there were anything else left of it or not, she would have had that; that, and the sea-green dress. While she talked, her mother was ironing in the back room. The dress was owed for. She could not pay for it till she began to get her own pay.
What was the use of telling a girl like that—all flushed with beauty and vanity, and gay expectation—about his having a house to build? What would it seem to her,—his busy life all spring and summer among the chips and shavings, hammering, planing, fitting, chiseling, buying screws, and nails, and patent fastenings, tiles and pipes; contriving and hurrying, working out with painstaking in laborious detail an agreement, that a new rich man might get into his new rich house by October? When she had only to make herself lovely and step out among the lights before a gay assembly, to be applauded and boqueted, to be stared at and followed; to live in a dream, and call it her profession? When Frank Sunderline knew there was nothing real in it all; nothing that would stand, or remain; only her youth, and prettiness, and forwardness, and the facility of people away from home and in by-places to be amused with second-rate amusement, as they manage to feed on second-rate fare?
It was no use to say this to her, either; to warn her as he had done before. She must wear out her illusions, as she would wear out her glistening silk dress. He must leave her now, with the shimmer of them all about her imagination, bewildering it, as the lovely, lustrous heap upon her lap threw a bewilderment about her own very face and figure, and made it for the moment beautiful with all enticing, outward complement and suggestion.
He told Ray Ingraham; and he said what a pity it was; what a mistake.
Ray did not answer for a minute; she had a little struggle with herself; a little fight with that in her heart which made itself manifest to her in a single quick leap of its pulses.