“How could I help seeing it? Why, you treated me precisely as if I were another man. Not that I didn’t like it, on the whole. A woman gets tired of being always on guard.” She smiled at herself. “That sounds horribly conceited. But you know what I mean. The men never lose a chance to practice. Then, too—well, if a woman has the reputation of being rich she need not flatter herself that it is her charms that do all the drawing.”
“That’s the supreme curse of money—it all but cuts one off from love and friendship. Fortunately it, to a great extent, takes the place of them.”
“I don’t like to hear you say that,” said she.
“How many poor people get love and friendship?” replied I. “Isn’t it the truth that there is little—very, very little—real love or friendship in the world? All I meant was that money, and the independence and comfort and the counterfeit of affection it brings, are better than nothing at all.”
“Oh, I see,” said she. “You are so sensible—and you don’t cant. That was why I liked to talk with you. At first I thought you cynical and hard. That’s the first impression plain good sense makes. We are used to hearing only shallow sentimentality.”
“The unending flapdoodle,” said I.
“Flapdoodle,” agreed she. “Then—I began to discover that you were anything but hard—that you looked at people as they are, and liked them for themselves, not for what they pretended to be. I was beginning to trust you—to venture timidly in the direction of being my natural self—when you left.”
“Well—here I am again,” said I. “And we start in afresh.”
She smiled with embarrassment. “Yes,” she said hesitatingly. “But the circumstances have changed somewhat.”
I know full well now what I should have said. I should have replied, “Yes—we are both almost free—but soon will be altogether free—I in six months, you as soon as you break your engagement.” That would have been bold and intelligent—for it is always intelligent to make the issue clear at the earliest possible moment. But I did not speak. I remained silent. Why? Because as I was talking with her I was realizing that I had been deceiving myself in a curious fashion. I had been so concentratedly in love with her— Gentle reader, I see the mocking smile on your shallowly sentimental face. You are ridiculing a love that could have such restraint as mine—that could bear with Edna, could wait, could refrain from any of the familiar much-admired impetuosities and follies. You cannot understand. In this day when men no longer regard or feel their responsibilities in taking a more or less helpless woman to wife, your sense of the decencies is utterly corrupted. But let me say that no matter how ardently and romantically a man may conduct himself, a woman would do well to take care how she trusts him if he has a bad or even a doubtful record as to his way of meeting his responsibilities of whatever sort. That kind of love may “listen good,” but it does not “live good.” However—as I was about to say when your smile interrupted me, my all-absorbing love for Mary Kirkwood had misled me into assuming, with no reason whatsoever, that she understood all, that she knew I was eager to come to her, and would come as soon as I could. You will say this was absurd. Granted. But is not a man in love always absurd? You will say it was egotistical. Granted. But is not a man in love always egotistical? It is not the realities but the delusions that keep us going; and in those long months of waiting, of hoping often against hope, I had to have a delusion to keep me going. But now, her friendly, simply friendly, way of talking to me made me see that I had her yet to win, that I could not speak out directly as I had planned. You, who probably know women well, may say that this was a mistake. Perhaps. Nevertheless I could not have done otherwise.