VI.
New York meanwhile, in its effeminateness, had forgotten the snow, and was listening to the sun. And the day after the return from Aiken, as Roland, in accordance with an agreement of which the locus sigilli had a kiss for token, went down to knock at Mr. Dunellen's office door, the sky was as fair as it had been in the South. Yet to him it was unobtrusive. His mind was occupied with fancies that had a birth, a little span of life, and which in passing away were succeeded by others as ephemeral as themselves—thoughts about nothing at all that came and went unnoticed: a man he had met in Corfu, and whom a face in the street recalled; the glisten of silk in a window that took him back to Japan;—but beneath them was a purpose settled and dominant, a resolution to trick Fate and outwit it—one which, during the journey from Aiken, had so possessed him that, in attending to the wants of Mrs. Metuchen or in ministering to Justine, at times he had been quasi-somnambulistic, at others wholly vague. But now, as he gave his card to an office-boy, to all outward intent he was confident and at ease; he picked up a paper and affected to lose himself in its columns. Presently the boy returned, and he was ushered into the room which he had previously visited. On this occasion Mr. Dunellen was not seated, but standing, his back to the door. As Roland entered he turned, and the young man stepped forward, his hand outstretched.
To his contentment, and a little also to his surprise, in answer to that outstretched hand Honest Paul extended his, and Roland had the pleasure of holding three apparently docile fingers in his own; but in a moment they withdrew themselves, and he felt called upon to speak.
"Mr. Dunellen," he began, with that confident air a creditor has who comes to claim his due, "Mr. Dunellen, I have ventured to interrupt you again. And again I am a suppliant. But this time it is of your daughter, not of my father, that—"
He hesitated, and well he might. Mr. Dunellen, who had remained standing, and who in so doing had prevented Roland from sitting down, now assumed the suspicious appearance of one who detects an unpleasant smell; his features contracted, and for no other reason, apparently, than that of intimidating the suppliant in his prayer.
But Roland was not to be abashed; he recovered himself, and continued glibly enough: "The matter is this. I am sincerely attached to your daughter, and I am come to ask your consent to our marriage."
"That is the purpose of your visit, is it?"
"It is."
"My daughter is aware of it, I suppose?"