Had I not been obsessed with the desire at all costs to divert the unhappy tide of Jerry's infatuation, I must have known that no girl such as Una Habberton could lend herself as accessory to a plan like mine. I had had evidence enough that she cared for Jerry in a tender, almost a motherly way, and while I had been unsuccessful in my mission, I now saw no reason to change my opinion. Indeed, in my hotel room that night, the more I thought of the interview the more convinced I was that whatever modesty deterred her, it was the very fact of her caring so much that made the thing impossible to her. Her air of indifference, carefully assumed, had not hidden the rapid rise and fall of her breast at the confession of my fears. The inquietude of her manner, the curiosity which had permitted me to finish my story, were proof convincing that her interests in Jerry were more than ordinarily involved, and the more I thought of her attitude the more I wondered at my own temerity.
A brazen minx I had once thought her, but tonight in her plain white frock and sober conventional surroundings she seemed to show something of the quiet poise of a nurse or a nun. She seemed to exemplify the thought that the ideal woman is both wood-nymph and madonna. By contrast to the Nietzschian intriguer I had left that morning at Briar Hills, she was a paragon of all virtues. Nietzsche! The philosopher of the sty! Freud, his runt!
When, the following morning, I found Jack Ballard in his apartment at eleven (as usual fastening his cravat) I told him of the unfortunate end to my ventures, but he only laughed at me.
"My dear Pope," he said, "you are suffering from a severe attack of paternomania. If you don't mind my saying so, you're making a prodigious ass of yourself and of Jerry. If I were the boy, I'd pack you out bag and baggage. Imagine it! Put yourself in his place. Would you like any meddling in your little affairs of gallantry?" And he laughed aloud at his joke. I scowled at him, but passed the absurd remark in dignified silence.
"If it were an affair of gallantry!" I said at last, "I could forgive him that, and her. But this—it's mere milk and water and he thinks it's the nectar of the gods. The pity of it!"
"A pity, yes. But who is responsible? Not Jerry, surely. He's what you've made him," Jack paused expressively. "Does he—?" he began and paused. I read his meaning.
"No," I said.
"Um! Knowledge will come like a thunderclap to Jerry. Then—look out!"
I agreed with him.
"But Jerry's amatory ventures are none of your business, Pope," he went on. "Let the boy go the limit. He has got to do it. It won't hurt him. I told you that Marcia would help him cut his eye-teeth. She's doing it in approved modern fashion, without instruments or gas. He'll recover. Let 'em alone. I'll tell you what to do. Just put your precious dialectics in cold storage awhile—they'll keep; nobody'll thaw 'em out unless you do—and take a trip to 'Frisco."