CHAPTER IV
IN LOVE SUCCESSFUL
I
"But, my dear—but Laura, you don't stop to think!" exclaimed a certain young man to a certain young woman, at a somewhat interesting and important moment of their lives. "You certainly do not mean to say—to tell me—to tell me! Why—!"
He ceased, a gasp in his throat at the unbelievable effrontery of the woman who faced him in this situation. All he had asked of her was to marry him. And she had hesitated. It was a thing incredible!
It was Mr. Rawn, our hero. It could have been almost no one else who could have sustained precisely this attitude at precisely such a time. It was not despair, disappointment, anger, chagrin, pique, regret or resentment that marked his tones, but surprise, astonishment! Yes, it must have been John Rawn.
As to the young woman herself, who now turned a somewhat pale face to one side as she left her hand in his, she might have been any one of many thousand others in that city. Her hair was brown, her features regular enough, her complexion nondescript, her garb non-committal. Not a person of ancient lineage, you would have said, or of much education in the world's ways, or of much worldly goods—these things do not always come to a saleswoman of twenty-five, whose salary is six dollars a week. Yet her face had in it now a very sweet sort of womanliness, her mouth a tender droop to it. Her eyes shone with that look which comes to a woman's eyes when first she hears the declaration of man's love—the most glorious and most tragic moment in all a woman's life.
The fates ordain which of these it shall be—glory or tragedy. Laura Johnson could not tell, cry in her soul as she might for some forecast shadow from the land of fates to show, visibly, upon the subconscious screen hidden in a girl's heart, the figure of the truth. All this was different from what she had pictured it to be. She had thought that love would come in some tender yet imperious way, that she would know some sudden wave of content and trust and assuredness. There was on her plain, severe face, now a wistfulness that almost glorified it after all. For, indeed, our human loving is most dignified and glorious in what it desires love to be.
He leaned again toward her, insistent, frowning, imperious. This was as she had planned. What, then, lacked? If she had sought for some strong man to sweep her from her calm, why was she now so calm? She asked this swiftly, vaguely, wonderingly, demanding to be told by these same fates which had implanted doubt in her heart, whether this was all that she might ever hope, whether this insufficient fashion was the way in which it came to all women—had come, always, to all the women of the world.
"You surely do not stop to consider," he renewed. "Why, look at me!"