There Mildred stopped and flung the paper aside. She did not care even to glance at the exercises prescribed or at the diet and the routine of daily work. How dull and uninspired! How grossly material! Stomach! Chewing! Exercising machines! Plodding dreary miles daily, rain or shine! What could such things have to do with the free and glorious career of an inspired singer? Keith was laughing at her as he hastened away, abandoning her to her fate.
She examined herself in the glass to make sure that the ravages of her attack of rage and grief and despair could be effaced within a few hours, then she wrote a note—formal yet friendly—to Stanley Baird, informing him that she would receive him that evening. He came while Cyrilla and Mildred were having their after, dinner coffee and cigarettes. He was a man who took great pains with his clothes, and got them where pains was not in vain. That evening he had arrayed himself with unusual care, and the result was a fine, manly figure of the well-bred New-Yorker type. Certainly Stanley had ground for his feeling that he deserved and got liking for himself. The three sat in the library for perhaps half an hour, then Mrs. Brindley rose to leave the other two alone. Mildred urged her to stay—Mildred who had been impatient of her presence when Stanley was announced. Urged her to stay in such a tone that Cyrilla could not persist, but had to sit down again. As the three talked on and on, Mildred continued to picture life with Stanley—continued the vivid picturing she had begun within ten minutes of Stanley's entering, the picturing that had caused her to insist on Cyrilla's remaining as chaperon. A young girl can do no such picturing as Mildred could not avoid doing. To the young girl married life, its tete-a-tetes, its intimacies, its routine, are all a blank. Any attempt she makes to fill in details goes far astray. But Mildred, with Stanley there before her, could see her life as it would be.
Toward half-past ten, Stanley said, shame-faced and pleading, "Mildred, I should like to see you alone for just a minute before I go."
Mildred said to Cyrilla: "No, don't move. We'll go into the drawing-room."
He followed her there, and when the sound of Mrs. Brindley's step in the hall had died away, he began: "I think I understand you a little now. I shan't insult you by returning or destroying that note or the check. I accept your decision—unless you wish to change it." He looked at her with eager appeal. His heart was trembling, was sick with apprehension, with the sense of weakness, of danger and gloom ahead. "Why shouldn't I help you, at least, Mildred?" he urged.
Whence the courage came she knew not, but through her choking throat she forced a positive, "No."
"And," he went on, "I meant what I said. I love you. I'm wretched without you. I want you to marry me, career or no career."
Her fears were clamorous, but she forced herself to say, "I can't change."
"I hoped—a little—that you sent me the note to-day because you— You didn't?"
"No," said Mildred. "I want us to be friends. But you must keep away."