Ross retained the impassive expression he had been cultivating ever since he read in English "high life" novels descriptions of the bearing of men of the "haut monde." "That's of no consequence," was his comment, in a tone of indifference. "I'm not marrying Del for her money."
"Don't throw yourself away, Ross," said she, much disquieted. "I feel sure you've been brought up too sensibly to do anything reckless. At least, be careful how you commit yourself until you are sure. In our station people have to think of a great many things before they think of anything so uncertain and so more or less fanciful as love. Rest assured, Adelaide is thinking of those things. Don't be less wise than she."
He changed the subject, and would not go back to it; and after a few minutes he telephoned Adelaide, ordered a cart, and set out to take her for a drive. Mrs. Whitney watched him depart with a heavy heart and so piteous a face that Ross was moved almost to the point of confiding in her what he was pretending not to admit to himself. "Ross is sensible beyond his years," she said to herself sadly, "but youth is so romantic. It never can see beyond the marriage ceremony."
Adelaide, with as much haste as was compatible with the demands of so important an occasion, was getting into a suitable costume. Suddenly she laid aside the hat she had selected from among several that were what the Fifth Avenue milliners call the "dernier cri." "No, I'll not go!" she exclaimed.
Ever since her father was stricken she had stayed near him. Ellen had his comfort and the household to look after, and besides was not good at initiating conversation and carrying it on alone; Arthur's tongue was paralyzed in his father's presence by his being unable for an instant to forget there what had occurred between them. So Del had borne practically the whole burden of filling the dreary, dragging hours for him—who could not speak, could not even show whether he understood or not. He had never been easy to talk to; now, when she could not tell but that what she said jarred upon a sick and inflamed soul, aggravating his torture by reminding him of things he longed to know yet could not inquire about, tantalizing him with suggestions—She dared not let her thoughts go far in that direction; it would soon have been impossible to send him any message beyond despairing looks.
Sometimes she kissed him. She knew he was separated from her as by a heavy, grated prison door, and was unable to feel the electric thrill of touch; yet she thought he must get some joy out of the sight of the dumb show of caress. Again, she would give up trying to look cheerful, and would weep—and let him see her weep, having an instinct that he understood what a relief tears were to her, and that she let him see them to make him feel her loving sympathy. Again, she would be so wrought upon by the steady agony of those fixed eyes that she would leave him abruptly to hide herself and shudder, tearless, at the utter misery and hopelessness of it all. She wondered at her mother's calm until she noticed, after a few weeks, how the face was withering with that shriveling which comes from within when a living thing is dying at the core.
She read the Bible to him, selecting consolatory passage with the aid of a concordance, in the evenings after he had been lifted into bed for the night. She was filled with protest as she read; for it seemed to her that this good man, her best of fathers, thus savagely and causelessly stricken, was proof before her eyes that the sentences executed against men were not divine, but the devilish emanations of brute chance. "There may be a devil," she said to herself, frightened at her own blasphemy, "but there certainly is no God." Again, the Bible's promises, so confident, so lofty, so marvelously responsive to the longings and cravings of every kind of desolation and woe, had a soothing effect upon her; and they helped to put her in the frame of mind to find for conversation—or, rather, for her monologues to him—subjects which her instinct told her would be welcome visitors in that prison.
She talked to him of how he was loved, of how noble his influence had been in their lives. She analyzed him to himself, saying things she would never have dared say had there been the slightest chance of so much response as the flutter of an eyelid. And as, so it seemed to her, the sympathetic relations and understanding between them grew, she became franker, talked of her aspirations—new-born aspirations in harmony with his life and belief. And, explaining herself for his benefit and bringing to light her inmost being to show to him, she saw it herself. And when she one day said to him, "Your illness has made a better woman of me, father, dear father," she felt it with all her heart.
It was from this atmosphere, and enveloped in it, that she went out to greet Ross; and, as she went, she was surprised at her own calmness before the prospect of seeing him again, after six months' separation—the longest in their lives.
His expression was scrupulously correct—joy at seeing her shadowed by sympathy for her calamity. When they were safely alone, he took her hand and was about to kiss her. Her beauty was of the kind that is different from, and beyond, memory's best photograph. She never looked exactly the same twice; that morning she seemed to him far more tempting than he had been thinking, with his head for so many weeks full of worldly ideas. He was thrilled anew, and his resolve hesitated before the fine pallor of her face, the slim lines of her figure, and the glimpses of her smooth white skin through the openwork in the yoke and sleeves of her blouse. But, instead of responding she drew back, just a little. He instantly suspected her of being in the state of mind into which he had been trying to get himself. He dropped her hand. A trifling incident, but a trifle is enough to cut the communications between two human beings; it often accomplishes what the rudest shocks would not. They went to the far, secluded end of the garden, he asking and she answering questions about her father.