“Only one. Come in, Gerald. I want you to meet him. You’ve heard me speak of Judge Bewick in Denver, where I lived so long. Well, this is his son, Doctor Thomas Bewick. 346He’s in Florence just for a visit. It’s a wonder, come to think of it, that you haven’t heard of his being here. We’ve been going everywhere and seeing everything and giving dinner-parties. Well, never tell me again that news spreads so fast in Florence! Come on. I want you to know each other. You’ll be sure to like him.”
“I don’t think I will. I mean that I don’t think I will go into the house with you, Aurora.”
“Now, Gerald,” she said in a warning voice, at which black clouds of impending displeasure loomed over the horizon, “this isn’t the way to begin. Don’t be odd and trying. I should feel hurt, now truly, if I had to think your regard for me wasn’t equal to doing such a little thing for me as this. Tom’s one of my very best friends, and he’s heard us talk so much of you. He’s seen your painting of me. I do want you to know him, and I want him to know you. Then, too, Gerald dear, and this is the main reason, I want you to get good and rested, and to take a little wine before you start for home. Though you say the air is like a warm bath, your hands are cold, I notice.”
Too tired from the emotions of the evening to make any valid resistance, emptied in fact of all feeling except a flat sort of bewilderment, Gerald followed, like a little boy in fear of rough-handling from his so much bigger nurse.
They found Estelle and Tom in the parlor.
“Well, I was wondering what had become of you!” cried Estelle as Aurora appeared in the doorway, and behind her shoulder the shadowy, unexpected face of Gerald.
“Tom,” said Aurora, “this is my friend Mr. Fane that you’ve heard us talk so much about, the painter, you know, who painted that picture of me up there. And this is Doctor Bewick, Gerald, to whom I am under a thousand 347obligations, besides the obligation of his having probably saved my life out in Denver, not so many years ago, when I was dangerously ill.”
Aurora was luminous with gladness. Aurora was so glad that she had not the concentration or the decency to attempt to hide it. She did not know of the flagrant betrayal of her feelings; she was not guarding against it, because her delight itself absorbed all her powers of thought. She stood there, a monument unveiled. And all the reason for it that one could see was that pindling, hollow-eyed young fellow who had entered the room in her wake.
Those who have not quarreled with a loved one, and known the pain of the fear that he may be lost to them, will surely never know the keenest joy. It takes the escape, the contrast, to make happiness shine out as brightly as it is capable of doing.
The two men, after conversation had engaged between them, promoted and helped along by the greater lingual readiness of the ladies, observed each other. This they did indirectly and as if doing nothing of the kind. But Estelle, as profoundly uneasy as if she had foreseen already the fate of the fat to end in the fire, was aware of it. She noted in Gerald’s stiffly adjusted face the unself-conscious eyebrows, formidably different one from the other; she noted how Doctor Tom, sturdy and self-collected as he was, kept knocking the ashes of his cigar into an inkstand full of ink.