“I simply don’t understand, Mrs. Nevin,—what you are trying to say.”
Trying to say! She! Joan! Well, just for that Joan would say it.
“Simply this. Hugh’s merely decided that if you’re the sort of girl it’s so easy to be affectionate with, you aren’t safe with a person of Michael Schwankovsky’s temperament. Anybody can see that Michael can’t keep his hands off you, and that you would be sorry if he could. But I told Hugh that it might come to more than petting. Suppose Michael’s actually thinking of marriage, Ariel!”
Ariel put her cup down on the table and stood up. “Marry Michael Schwankovsky!” she exclaimed—anger giving place to shock. “Why, he’s old enough to be my grandfather!” She looked down at Joan, and grew still again, but this time it was not a stony stillness. It was just sudden natural relaxation. “You have misunderstood Hugh,” she affirmed. “You’re as far off about him as you are about Michael. And they were both of them friends of yours long before I ever knew them. So it’s strange you can make these mistakes.” She said it in all simplicity and went on, more relaxed and at peace with every word she uttered, “I’m very fond of Michael Schwankovsky and very grateful to him. He believes in the pictures. I’d love him just for that. But I love him for himself. He means more to me than any one else living except Doctor Hazzard and Hugh. And he’d no more think of wanting to marry me than Doctor Hazzard would think of it. And Doctor Hazzard’s a grandfather with eight grandchildren. So you see.
“And you’ve made just as strange a mistake about Hugh too. Hugh’s very fond of me. And he’d never, never talk about me unkindly. I know he wouldn’t. He doesn’t know how to hide things, anyway. His eyes tell you what he thinks. And he’s never thought any hateful thoughts about me. Only very good thoughts! Dear thoughts!”
Joan looked up at Ariel, after a pause. “You do reassure me,” she murmured. “For when the time comes that I stand in a position of second parent to you, as it were, along with Hugh, I should hate to have him always fussing, and I do assure you I’d be on your side, not his, anyway.”
“A second parent to me? You mean a mother?” Ariel laughed, a rather interesting laugh to Joan because of the hint of wildness in it; but she held her languid pose in the corner of the couch, while her guest stood.
“Mrs. Nevin, you’re a little too young to be my mother, aren’t you, just as dear Michael is much too old to be my lover! Hugh doesn’t stand in the relation to me, either, that you imply. He’s not a guardian, or anything like that. We are dear friends, as I told you. And now that I’ve got my job, he isn’t even my host. You’re all mixed up.”
Ariel turned toward the window, which was open, in one swift motion of flight. But she did not fly. She was civilized. She would say a proper good-by to her hostess and depart with dignity by the door. Joan stood up, with slightly delayed protests. Ariel heard her own voice asking a question that she did not want to ask, but it was as uncontrollable as her first motion of flight had been. “Mrs. Nevin, are you engaged to Hugh? Were you meaning that too?”
Joan restrained a smile, but obviously restrained it. “No, dear child,” she replied. “But I have a refusal. If you know what that means. It’s a term used largely in real estate, I believe. Must you go?”