“Don’t you see that you are flummoxed by something that is stronger than both of us? I’m shaken by it, and I’m whipcord. We’re poor starving people, God help us! and we can save each other. We knew we could do it at once, when we met. . . . If I said all the pretty things in the world it wouldn’t help. We’re too far gone for that. When you’re starving you don’t want chocolates. . . . I’m only saying what I know. It is true of myself. If I have made a mistake about you, I am sorry. You can go. . . . Have I made a mistake?”
For answer she turned towards him, gazed at him with glazing eyes, raised her arms, and drew him into them.
A week later Nelly Oliver dined with Logan and Mendel at the Pot-au-Feu. They had a special dinner and drank champagne, for it was what Logan called the “nuptial feast.”
Oliver, as they called her, was flushed with excitement, and kept on telling Mendel that he was the prettiest boy she had ever seen. She called Logan “Pip”—“Pip darling,” “Pip dearest,” “Pipkin” and “Pipsy”—because she said he was like an orange-pip, bitter and hard in the midst of sweetness.
“Pip says you’re a genius,” she said to Mendel. “What does he mean?”
Mendel disliked her, though he tried hard to persuade himself that she was charming. He was baffled by the solemnity with which Logan was taking her, for she seemed to him the type made for occasional solace and not for companionship. Exploring her with his mind and instinct, she seemed to him soft and pulpy, not unlike an orange, and if she and Logan were to set up a common life, then he would be like a pip indeed. . . . How could he explain to her the nature of genius? Can you explain the night to an insect that lives but an hour in the morning?
“I don’t know,” he said brusquely.
Logan was dimly aware that his friend and his girl were not pleasing each other, and he set himself to keep them amused. He succeeded fairly well, but his humour was forced, for he was under the spell of the girl and the thought of the adventure to which she had consented. She knew it, and was loud and shrill and triumphant, continually setting Mendel’s teeth on edge, for the purity of his instinct was disgusted by the blurring and swamping of life by any emotion, and the quality of hers was not such as to win indulgence.
“Logan will tell you what genius is,” he said.
“She’ll find that out soon enough if she lives with me,” growled Logan a little pompously.