“Certainly. That is what I said the other day. I thought you—”
“Yes, I was ill-natured then. But I want to please you. And we really ought to be civil.”
One day is so like another in the city. Every day something new, and, the new the same thing over again. And always the expectation that it will be different tomorrow. Nothing is so tiresome as a kaleidoscope, though it never repeats itself.
Fortunately there are two pursuits that never pall—making money and making love.
Henderson had a new object in life, though the new one did not sensibly divert him from the old; it rather threw a charming light over it, and made the possibilities of it more attractive. In all his schemes he found the thought of Margaret entering. Why should it not have been Carmen? he sometimes thought. She thoroughly understood him. She would never stand in the way of his most daring ambitions with any scruples. Her conscience would never nag his. She would be ambitious for a career for him. Would she care for him or the career? How clever she was! And affectionate? She would be if she had a heart.
He was not balancing the two. What man ever does, in fact? It was simply because Margaret had a heart that he loved her, that she seemed necessary to him. He was quite capable of making a match for his advancement, but he felt strong enough to make one for his own pleasure. And if there are men so worldly as not to be attracted to unworldliness in a woman, Henderson was not one of them. If his heart had not dictated, his brain would have told him the value of the sympathy of a good woman.
He was a very busy man, in the thick of the struggle for a great fortune. It did not occur to him to reflect whether she would approve all the methods he resorted to, but all the women he knew liked success, and the thought of her invigorated him. If she once loved him, she would approve what he did.
He saw much of her in those passing days—days that went like a dream to one of them at least. He was a welcome guest at the Arbusers', but he saw little of Margaret alone. It did not matter. A chance look is a volume; a word is a library. They saw each other; they heard each other. And then passion grows almost as well in the absence as in the presence of the object. Imagination then has free play. A little separation sometimes will fan it into a flame.
The days went by, and Margaret's visit was over. I am obliged to say that the leave-taking was a gay one, as full of laughter as it was of hope. Brandon was such a little way off. Henderson often had business there. The Misses Arbuser said, “Of course.” And Margaret said he must not forget that she lived there. Even when she bade her entertainers an affectionate good-by, she could not look very unhappy.
Spring was coming. That day in the cars there were few signs of it on the roadside to be seen, but the buds were swelling. And Margaret, neglecting the book which lay on her lap, and looking out the window, felt it in all her veins.