Not Letty’s disappearance was uppermost in his mind, for the moment, but his own inhibitions.
“My God, what’s the matter with me?” he was muttering to himself. “Am I going insane? Have I been insane all along? Why can’t I say which of these two women I want, when I can have either?”
He placed over against each other the special set of spells which each threw upon his heart.
Barbara was of his own world; she knew the people he knew; she had the same interests, and the same way of showing them. Moreover, she had in a measure grown into his life. Their friendship was not only intimate it was one of long standing. Though she worried, hectored, and exasperated him, she had fits 302 of generous repentance, in which she mothered him adorably. This double-harness of comradeship had worked for so many years that he couldn’t imagine wearing it with another.
And yet Letty pulled so piteously at his heart that he fairly melted in tenderness toward her. Everything he knew as appeal was summed up in her soft voice, her gentle manner, her humility, her unquestioning faith in himself. No one had ever had faith in him before. To Barbe he was a booby when he was not a baby. To Letty he was a hero, strong, wise, commanding. It wasn’t merely his vanity that she touched; it was his manliness. Barbe suppressed his manliness, because she herself was so imperious. Letty depended on it, and therefore drew it out. Because she believed him a man, he could be a man; whereas with Barbe, as with everyone else, he was a creature to be liked, humored, laughed at, and good-naturedly despised. He was sick of being liked, humored, and laughed at; he rebelled with every atom in him that was masculine at being good-naturedly despised. To find anyone who thought him big and vigorous was to his starved spirit, as the psalmist says, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. In having her weakness to hold up he could for the first time in his life feel himself of use.
If there was no Barbe in the world he could have taken Letty as the mate his soul was longing for. Yet how could he deal such a blow at Barbe’s loyalty? She had protected him during all his life, from boyhood upwards. Between him and derision she had stood like a young lioness. How could he deny her now?—no 303 matter what frail, gentle hands were clinging around his heart?
“How can I? How can I? How can I?”
He was torturing himself with this question when the telephone rang, and he knew that Letty had not been found.
“No; nothing,” were the words of Mr. Nailes. “No one of the name has been reported at any of the hospitals, or police stations, or any other public institution. They’ve applied at all the motion-picture studios round New York; but still with no result. This, of course, is only the preliminary search, as much as they’ve been able to accomplish in one afternoon and evening. You mustn’t be disappointed. To-morrow is likely to be more successful.”
Rash was, therefore, thrown back on another phase of his situation. Letty was lost. She was not only lost, but she had run away from him. She had not only run away from him, but she had done it so that he might be rid of her. She had not only done it so that he might be rid of her, but....