He stood for a moment with his eyes on the fresh young leaves which stirred softly. Then, as if hope and courage had passed into him with the air of spring, he turned away and walked rapidly to the gate of the Governor's house. His hand was on the iron fence, and he was about to enter the yard, when the door opened and Patty came out on the porch with Julius Gershom. Stepping quickly back under the trees, Stephen watched the girl descend the steps, pass the fountain, and go swiftly out of the gate into the broad drive of the Square. She was talking eagerly to her companion; and, though she had told him that she disliked the man, she was smiling up at him while she talked. Her face was like a pink flower under the dark brim of her sailor hat, and in her eyes, beneath the inquiring eyebrows, there was the expression of charming archness that he had imagined so vividly. If she saw him, she made no sign; and for a moment after she had gone by, he stood vaguely wondering if she had seen him and if she had chosen this way to punish him for his neglect of the past two or three weeks? But even then, accepting that charitable interpretation, what explained the objectionable presence of Gershom? Was there anything that could explain or excuse the presence of Gershom?
The fire in his heart died down to cinders, while the light faded not only from that hidden country of the endless roads, but from the green hill and the blue sky and the little shining leaves of the branches overhead.
In the distance, he could see the two figures moving onward toward the gate of the Square; and beyond them there was only the long straight street filled with gray dust and the empty shadows of human beings.
CHAPTER XVII
MRS. GREEN
As Patty went by so quickly, she saw Stephen without appearing to glance in his direction. For the last few weeks a flame had run over her whenever she remembered, and there was scarcely a moment when it was out of her mind, that she had shown her heart so openly and that, as she expressed it bitterly, "he had hidden behind his mother." "If he comes back again," she told herself recklessly, and she felt scorched when she thought that he might never come back, "I'll let him see that I can trifle as well as, or better, than he can. I'll let him see that two can play at that kind of game." A hundred times Corinna's warning returned to her. The words, which had made so slight an impression when she heard them, were burned now into her memory. Oh, Mrs. Page had known all along what it meant! She had understood from the beginning; and she had tried, without hurting her, to make her see the blind folly of such an infatuation. As she thought of this to-day, Patty's heart ached with injured pride and resentment, not only against Stephen, but against the unfairness of life. Why was it that men and circumstances would never let one be natural and generous? Was there a conspiracy of events, as Mrs. Page had once said, to prevent the finest impulses from coming to flower? "I'd have done anything on earth for him," thought the girl with passionate indignation. "I'd have made any sacrifice. I could have been anything that he wanted." And she felt bitterly that the best in her soul, the sacred places of her life had been invaded and destroyed. The blighted sensation which accompanies the recoil of an emotion seemed to suspend not only the energy of her spirit, but the very breath in her body. A change had passed over her heart and the world around her and the persons and events which had so recently composed her universe. She felt now that she cared for none of them, that, one and all, they had ceased to interest her; and that the things which filled their lives were all vacant and meaningless forms. It was as if the vitality of existence had been drained away, leaving an empty shell. Nothing was real, nothing was alive but the aching core of her own wounded heart.
"I don't care. I won't let it spoil my life," she resolved while she bit back a sob. "Whatever happens, I am not going to let my life be ruined." She had repeated this so often that it had begun to drone in her mind like a line out of a hymn-book; and she was still repeating it when she swept by Stephen without so much as a word or a look. A dangerous mood was upon her. Nothing mattered, she felt, if she could only prove to him that she also had been trifling; that his kiss had meant as little to her as to him; that from the beginning to the end she had been as indifferent as he was.
Her step quickened into a run; and Gershom, striding, in order to keep up with her, looked at her with the jovial laugh that she hated. "You're in a powerful hurry to-day, ain't you?" he remarked.
"I'm always in a hurry. You have to hurry to get anything out of life." As she glanced up into his admiring eyes, she found herself wondering what Stephen had thought while he watched her? She wished that it had been anybody but Gershom. He seemed an unworthy instrument of revenge, though, she reflected, with a touch of her father's sagacity, one couldn't always choose the tools one would like best. Most people would admit that he was good-looking in a common way, she supposed; and it was only of late that she had realized how essentially vulgar he was.