"Will you marry me?"
"It may be. I can't tell. Not yet. Are you content to wait?"
"I am not! But I've no intention of taking you by force, although I don't feel particularly civilized at the present moment. But I'll win you and have you if you love me. Make no doubt of that. You may have ten thousand strange reasons—they count for nothing with me. And I intend to see you every day. I'll call you up in the morning. Now I go, and as quickly as I can get out."
XX
He plunged down the steps into a snowstorm. Even during his precipitate retreat he had realized the advisability of telephoning for a taxi, but had been incapable of the anti-climax. He pulled his hat over his eyes, turned up the collar of his coat, and made his way hastily toward Park Avenue. There was not a cab in sight. Nor was there a rumble in the tunnel; no doubt the cars were snow-bound. He hesitated only a moment: it would hardly take him longer to walk to his hotel than to the Grand Central Station, but he crossed over to Madison Avenue at once, for it was bitter walking and there was a bare chance of picking up a cab returning from one of the hotels.
But the narrow street between its high dark walls looked like a deserted mountain pass rapidly filling with snow. The tall street-lamps shed a sad and ghostly beam. They might have been the hooded torches of cave dwellers sheltering from enemies and the storm in those perpendicular fastnesses. Far down, a red sphere glowed dimly, exalting the illusion. He almost fancied he could see the out-posts of primeval forests bending over the cañon and wondered why the "Poet of Manhattan" had never immortalized a scene at once so sinister and so lovely.
And no stillness of a high mountain solitude had ever been more intense. Not even a muffled roar from trains on the distant "L's." Clavering wondered if he really were in New York. The whole evening had been unreal enough. Certainly all that was prosaic and ugly and feverish had been obliterated by what it was no flight of fancy to call white magic. That seething mass of humanity, that so often looked as if rushing hither and thither with no definite purpose, driven merely by the obsession of speed, was as supine in its brief privacy as its dead. In spite of the fever in him he felt curiously uplifted—and glad to be alone. There are moods and solitudes when a man wants no woman, however much he may be wanting one particular woman.… But the mood was ephemeral; he had been too close to her a moment before. Moreover, she was still unpossessed.… She seemed to take shape slowly in the white whirling snow, as white and imponderable.… A Nordic princess drifting northward over her steppes.… God! Would he ever get her?… If he did not it would be because one of them was qualifying for another incarnation.
He walked down the avenue as rapidly as possible, his hands in his pockets, his head bent to the wind, no longer transported; forcing his mind to dwell on the warmth of his rooms and his bed.… His head ached. He'd go to the office tomorrow and write his column there. Then think things out. How was he to win such a woman? Make her sure of herself? Convert her doubts into a passionate certainty? She, with her highly technical past! Make no mistakes? If he made a precipitate ass of himself—what comparisons!… His warm bed … the complete and personal isolation of his rooms … he had never given even a tea to women … he gave his dinners in restaurants.… How many more blocks? The snow was thicker. He couldn't even see the arcade of Madison Square Garden, although a faint diffused radiance high in air was no doubt the crown of lights on the Metropolitan Tower.… Had he made a wrong move in bolting——?
His thoughts and counter-thoughts came to an abrupt end. At the corner of Thirtieth Street he collided with a small figure in a fur coat and nearly knocked it over. He was for striding on with a muttered apology, when the girl caught him by the arm with a light laugh.