“No matter,” he replied, and she thought she saw, rather than heard, something very like a sigh.
CHAPTER XIII.
A COMPROMISE WITH CONVENTIONALITY.
MARLOWE was as responsible for Emily’s self-exaggeration as was Emily herself. He had been enveloping her in an atmosphere of adulation, through which she could see clearly and sensibly neither him nor herself nor her affairs.
When she first appeared he was deeply entangled elsewhere. But at once with the adroitness of experience, he extricated himself and boldly advanced into the new and unprecedently attractive net which fate was spreading for him. He was of those men who do not go far on the journey without a woman, or long with the same woman. He abhorred monotony both in work and in love; a typical impressionist, he soon found one subject, whether for his mind or for his heart, exhausted and wearisome.
Emily in her loneliness and youth, yearning for love and companionship, was so frankly attracted that he at first thought her as easy a conquest as had been the women who dwelt in the many and brief chapters of the annals of his conquering career. But he, and she also, to her great surprise, discovered that, while she had cast aside most conventionality in practice and all conventionality in theory there remained an immovable remnant. And this, fast anchored in unreasoning inherited instinct, stubbornly resisted their joint attack. In former instances of somewhat similar discoveries, he had winged swiftly, and gracefully, away; now, to his astonishment, he found that his wings were snared. Without intention on his part, without effort on her part, he was fairly caught. Nor was he struggling against the toils.
They had been together many times since the return from Furnaceville. And usually it was just he and she, dining in the open air, or taking long drives or walks, or sailing the river or the bay. But their perplexed state of mind had kept them from all but subtle reference to the one subject of which both were thinking more and more intently and intensely. One night they were driving in a hansom after a dinner on the Savoy balcony—he suddenly bent and kissed the long sleeve of her thin summer dress at the wrist. “You light a flame that goes dancing through my veins,” he said. “I wish I could find new words to put it in. But I’ve only the old ones, Emily—I love you and I want your love—I want you. This is an unconditional surrender and I’m begging you to receive it. You won’t say no, will you, Emily?”
Her eyes were brilliant and her cheeks pale. But she succeeded in controlling her voice so that she could put a little mockery into her tone when she said: “What—you! You, who are notoriously opposed to unconditional surrender. I never expected to live to see the day when you would praise treason and proclaim yourself a traitor.”
“I love you,” he said—“that’s all the answer I can make.”
“And only a few days ago some one was repeating to me a remark of yours—let me see, how did you put it? Oh, yes—‘love is a bird that does not sing well in a cage.’”
“I said it—and I meant it,” he replied. “And I love you—that’s all. I still believe what I said, but—please, Emily, dear—bring the cage!”