She also took him over to several symphony concerts, and often played classic selections to him in the twilight. He had no objection to music, as it either spurred his mind into fresh activity upon problems besetting it, or soothed him into slumber. He loved the little room with the soft green shadows; it reminded him of the woods, of which he still was passionately fond; and he found it both homelike and safe. Other houses in Elsinore, larger and more luxurious, were homelike enough, but too often were graced by marriageable daughters, who "showed their hand." Rush was as little vain and conceited as a man may be, but he was well aware that eligible men in Elsinore were few, and that everybody must know that his intake, already large, must increase with the years.
But—as the wise Mr. Broderick would have predicted had he not been interested elsewhere during this period—the tension grew too strong for Alys Crumley. Nervous and high-strung, with her reservoir of human emotions undepleted by even a hard flirtation since her early youth, idealistic, romantic, and imaginative, she began to realise that with each long uninterrupted evening—Mrs. Crumley was the most tactful of parents—she was growing more femininely sensitive to this man's magnetism and charm, to his quick responsive mind, to the mobility under the surface of his lean hard face, to the suggestion of indomitable strength which was the chief characteristic of the new American race of men.
It was not long before she was exaggerating every attractive attribute he possessed until he no longer seemed what he was, a fine specimen of his type, but a glorified superbeing and the one desirable man on earth. Her sense of superiority over this "rather crude Western specimen who knew nothing but his job," and to whom she could teach so much, had protected her for a time, held her femaleness and imagination in abeyance, but insensibly his sheer masculinity swamped her, left her without a rock but pride to cling to.
It was then that she showed her hand.
For a time after her discovery she was merely furious with herself; she was twenty-six and no weakling, neither sentiment nor passion should master her. But this phase was brief. Infatuation is not cast out either by reason or pride, and very soon her mind opened to the insidious whisper: "Why not?" What was the career of staff artist, full of liberty, excitement, and good fellowship as it might be, to marriage with an ambitious man capable of inspiring the wildest love? Sooner or later had she not intended to make just such a marriage?
From this inception her deductions followed in logical feminine sequence. If she loved him with a completeness which was both preadamic and neoteric, it was of course because he was consumed with a similar passion; in other words he was her mate. He might be too comfortable and content to have realised it so far, but only one awakening was possible, and hers was the entrancing part to reveal him to himself.
She knew that while by no means a beauty, she was as far from commonplace in colouring at least as in style. Her eyes were an odd opaque olive, their tint so pronounced that it seemed to invade the pale ivory of her skin and the smooth masses of her hair. It was a far more subtle face than American women as a rule possess, and the eyes in spite of a curious inscrutability that might mean anything were capable of a play of lights directed from a battery more archaic than modern; and late one evening after she had read him an impassioned drama (ancient) and there was a dusky rose in either cheek, she turned them on.
Rush immediately took fright. She had not roused a responsive spark of passion in him. Moreover, he was now haunted continually by the image of a sweet, remote, and (to him) far more mysterious woman, whom he worshipped as the ideal of all womanhood.
There was none of the old time American suavity about Rush. He was abrupt, forthright, and impatient. But he was kind and innately chivalrous. He "let Miss Crumley down" as gently as he could; but he let her down. No doubt of that. In less than a week she faced the bewildering fact that a man could strike loose a woman's emotional torrents while his own depths awaited the magical touch of another. It was incredible, preposterous.