She was silent, and I took her somber expression to mean that she feared I was hiding some subtlety.
“I mean just what I say, Anita,” I hastened to explain. “Friends—simply friends.” And my manner fitted my words.
She looked strangely at me. “You would be content with that?” she asked.
I answered what I thought would please her. “Let us make the best of our bad bargain,” said I. “You can trust me now, don't you think you can?”
She nodded without speaking; we were at the door, and the servants were hastening out to receive us. Always the servants between us. Servants indoors, servants outdoors; morning, noon and night, from waking to sleeping, these servants to whom we are slaves. As those interrupting servants sent us each a separate way, her to her maid, me to my valet, I was depressed with the chill that the opportunity that has not been seen leaves behind it as it departs.
“Well,” said I to myself by way of consolation, as I was dressing for dinner, “she is certainly softening toward you, and when she sees the new house you will be still better friends.”
But, when the great day came, I was not so sure. Alva went for a “private view” with young Thornley; out of her enthusiasm she telephoned me from the very midst of the surroundings she found “so wonderful and so beautiful”—thus she assured me, and her voice made it impossible to doubt. And, the evening before the great day, I, going for a final look round, could find no flaw serious enough to justify the sinking feeling that came over me every time I thought of what Anita would think when she saw my efforts to realize her dream. I set out for “home” half a dozen times at least, that afternoon, before I pulled myself together, called myself an ass, and, with a pause at Delmonico's for a drink, which I ordered and then rejected, finally pushed myself in at the door. What, a state my nerves were in!
Alva had departed; Anita was waiting for me in her sitting-room. When she heard me in the hall, just outside, she stood in the doorway. “Come in,” she said to me, who did not dare so much as a glance at her.
I entered. I must have looked as I felt—like a boy, summoned before the teacher to be whipped in presence of the entire school. Then I was conscious that she had my hand—how she had got it, I don't know—and that she was murmuring, with tears of happiness in her voice: “Oh, I can't say it!”