"No. Why should I be?"
"You can spare this one little evening for me," he said, "no matter what wonderfully upright sort of future you’re planning. It won’t hurt any one. I’ll be irreproachable. I won’t make any demands, any requests. I won’t evoke old memories. Before we say good-by, let me have a few hours with the old Angelica—my beloved, reckless, adorable Angelica. Just to make a memory!"
"No; we better not!" she said.
It might well, she thought, make a memory which would last far, far too long.
"Why not, Angelica?"
"I don’t want to, Vincent, that’s all."
He didn’t urge her; he sat quietly beside her, suddenly dejected. The train ran on past dark woods, wide fields, lighted houses; stopped at lively little stations with their lines of motors—that world of bourgeois smartness which Angelica so admired. It turned her thoughts again to Eddie, and to all that she would gain through Eddie. She would be coming home to one of these little stations, met by her own motor, to be whirled off to her own lovely home, with servants to wait on her, with dignity, security, peace!
And a sudden disarming pity for Vincent rushed over her—poor Vincent who had nothing to give. She glanced cautiously at his face, gloomy, perplexed, his eyes clouded with a sort of hungry dissatisfaction. He couldn’t help but look bold all the time, but even that boldness was pitiful to her who knew his weakness, his faults, his vices, his follies. She had never felt so sorry for any one else.
"Walk home with me, if you like," she said.
They came out into the bewildering brilliance of Forty-Second Street side by side, and began walking east, slowly, in that astonishing hurly-burly of crowds, of glittering signs winking, flashing, pouring out into the night sky a flood of radiance, of hurrying taxis, immense motor-cars, trolleys, strings of fiercely lighted little shops, the windows filled with inane and shamelessly overpriced trinkets and souvenirs; noise, blinding light, crowds and crowds of people.