The Eddy: A Novel of To-day

by Clarence Louis Cullen

"She disappointed me, Laura," said Louise, feelingly. "I would not say that to anybody else but you. But she did. I don't know just what to think. I thought that, having returned in time to hear at least some of the things that were said to me, she would come with me when she saw how impossible it was for me to stay there. I can't even guess why she did not. That was the worst part of it—her remaining there. And now I am afraid that I did wrong in leaving her. Perhaps there was something to prevent her leaving. It may be that if I had stayed on with her for a while longer she might have——"

Laura interrupted her with a gesture.

"Don't say that, Louise," she put in, earnestly. "You must not do yourself injustice. That wouldn't be fair. Your mother is one of my oldest friends; we were girls together. But right is right. Your mother should never have permitted you to so much as set foot in that house. I am not disloyal to her in saying that. She herself knows in her heart that it is true. But, having been allowed to go there, you did your part; you played the game, as one says, without complaint; and you stayed as long as you could. You have nothing to reproach yourself for. Your mother herself, I think, will be fair enough to acknowledge that. And you are never to go back there. That, of course, is settled. The situation must work itself out in some other way. I feel perfectly confident that your mother will see it all in the right light, and before very long; probably while you are abroad with me. She will miss you. And it is right that she should miss you. Missing you, she will come to a realization of what she is sacrificing for—what? That, dear, is my prediction as to the way it will all come out. But you must not think of reproaching yourself for the step you have taken, nor even dream of retracing that step."

During the forenoon Laura telephoned Blythe, giving him an outline of what had happened.

"It was inevitable, of course," was Blythe's brief comment over the 'phone. "Since it had to come, I am glad that it is over with—better now than later. May I come up to see you?"

"To see me—hypocrite!" Laura answered, laughing—and she could hear Blythe hastily and rather fumbling hanging up the receiver.

Blythe arrived at Laura's early in the afternoon and his arrival was a signal for Laura to profess burdensome housekeeping cares in a distant part of the apartment.

This time Louise's feeling in Blythe's presence was not a mere vague shyness, but genuine embarrassment. She had thought of him a great deal during the night, particularly of that which had passed between them during the ride in the Park. Now she flushed at the thought that she had even passively permitted such a thing, much less have seemed to invite it. Her mother's position, and the stigma which, she could not but feel, that position placed upon herself, now seemed, with the humiliating incident of the night before fresh in her mind, to forbid the continuation of any relationship between Blythe and herself other than that of guardian and ward. It was purely from a sense of consideration for Blythe, a man who had won his way in the world in the teeth of almost insuperable obstacles, that Louise resolved that there must be an abridgement of their gradually growing intimacy. She had sighed in making that mental decision, for the relationship had been very agreeable and—and something else which she could not quite analyze; but she shrank from certain intuitive forecastings involving Blythe's progress toward the goal he had set for himself, which she feared a continuation of their closer relationship might develop.

Blythe was quick to notice her altered manner, expressed by a reserve which, with the penetration of an alert mind, he could not but see was studied. He was puzzled by it; but he attributed it, after a moment of rapid pondering, to the effect of the shock from which he knew she must still be suffering. Nevertheless he was conscious of a sudden depression which for a while he found it difficult to throw off.

Louise spared him the difficulty of making the first adversion to that which she knew was uppermost in his mind—her course, that is, now that she had voluntarily, but under the press of circumstance, detached herself from an impossible environment. More guardedly than she had related the incident to Laura, Louise told him of the affair; but he was more than able to fill in the grisly details.