The Indian summer sank into a heap of ashes from which all heat was spent. November looked in with its thin-lipped mornings and its sudden pantherlike dusks. Still they wandered, separate and yet together, from the refuge of one day to the next, establishing shrines of habit which made them less and less dispensable to each other’s happiness. She was always darting ahead into the uncertain shadows, hiding, and springing out that she might test his gladness in having refound her.
Each new day was an exquisite wax-statue which by night had melted to formlessness in his hands. He made repeated resolutions to organize his energies. He lived im-paradised in a lethargy of fond emotions. His career was at a halt; his opportunities were slipping from him. To encourage his industry he drew up a chart of the hours in the current month that he would work. He pinned it to the wall above his desk that it might reproach him if he fell below his average. The average was never reached. The chart was tom up. His most stalwart plans were driven as mist before the breath of her lightest fancy. Not that she encroached on him by deed or word; but her memory was a delirium which kept him always craving for her presence.
“If you were to drop me to-morrow,” she told him, “you’d never hear from me. I’m like that. I shouldn’t run after you.”
She left him to place his own construction on the statement—to discover its origin in nobility or carelessness. Whichever it was, it made him the needle while she remained the magnet. When he wasn’t with her, he was waiting for her; so the hours after midnight, when he had seen her home, were the only ones free from feverishness. His work suffered; he stole from the hours when he ought to have been in bed. He began to suspect that he was losing his confidence of touch. The suspicion was sharply confirmed when one of his commissioned articles came back with the cryptic intimation that it wasn’t exactly what the editor had expected. That meant the loss of five hundred dollars; what was worse, it filled him with artistic panic.
In the old days—the days of Life Till Twenty-one—fame had been the goal of his ambitions. He had set before his eyes, as though it were a crucifix, the austere aloofness of his father’s pure motives. He couldn’t afford to do that any longer. He was spending lavishly; the example of the extravagance of Fluffy’s lovers spurred his expenditures. He didn’t care how he won Desire’s admiration; win it he must. Unconsciously he was trying to win it with a display of generosity. Dimly he foresaw that he was doing her an injustice; he would have to cut down and recuperate the moment they were married. In preparation he painted to her the joys of simplicity and of life in the country. Her curl became agitated with merriment.
“That isn’t the way I’ve been brought up. Cottages don’t have bathrooms, and the country’s muddy except in summer. It wouldn’t suit me. And I do like to wear silk.” Then, with a shudder: “Poverty’s so ugly. There’s only one thing worse, and that’s growing old. Please, Meester Deek, let’s talk of something else.”
She was like a child, stopping her ears with her fingers and pleading, “Please don’t tell me any more ghost-stories.” He felt sorry for her; at such times she seemed so inexperienced and young. By her misplaced valuations, she was giving life such power to hurt her. Her sophistication seemed more apparent than real—a disguise for her lack of knowledge. He wanted to comfort her against old age. If one were loved, neither poverty nor growing old mattered. He thought of Dearie and the way she had married his father, with their joint affection and her high belief in him for their sole assets.
There were times when Desire seemed to guess his problem.
“I wish you’d do more work. Why don’t you leave me alone to-morrow? And you oughtn’t to keep on spending and spending. I’d be just as happy if you spent less.”
The joy of her thoughtfulness gave him hope and made him the more reckless. Besides, it wasn’t possible to economize in her company. Her fear of the subway and her abhorrence of crowded surface-cars made taxis a continual necessity. Her shoes were so thin that a mile of walking tired her; her clothes were so stylish that she would have looked conspicuous in any but a fashionable setting. Her method of dress, in which he delighted, limited them both to costly environments. He had named her rightly years ago in calling her “Princess.”