Red and Black

by Grace S. Richmond

“Certainly not.”

“If I cared with all my heart and soul for—someone else——” She rose suddenly to her feet, and stood before him, a tragic, lovely figure of despair. “Oh,” she breathed, “you simply have to know—I can’t keep it from you. You are going so soon—there’s no time to wait. I—I don’t know what you will think, but—over there you are going to go into all sorts of danger. I may never see you again. Is it a time to be afraid—for even a woman to be afraid—to speak? You may despise me for—showing my heart—but—oh, I can’t help it! Don’t—turn me away. If you do, I think I shall—die!”

Robert Black stood as if turned to stone. He had risen as she had risen; he now stood staring at her across the massive old black walnut desk as if he could not believe the evidence of his own ears. If Fanny were to make this incredible declaration at all, she had done it in the only possible way—across that study desk. If she had attempted to come near him, to put her hand in his, to try upon him the least of all feminine arts in approaching man, he would have retreated, bodily and spiritually, and have been at once too far away for her to reach. But the very manner of her appeal to him carried with it a certain dignity. He could not conceivably repulse her in the same way that he could have done if she had played the temptress, or even the woman who counts upon her personal charm at close range to sway a man’s heart and influence his decision. Fanny had studied this man, and gauged him well. If she had any possible chance with him it was only by making her supplication to him from a distance, and by looking, when she had made it—as she did look—like a young princess who stoops to lift him of her choice to her estate. It was undoubtedly the greatest moment of Fanny’s dramatic experience; she was a real actress now, for beyond all question she was living the part she acted, and the emotion which stirred her was the strongest of her life.

It was not long that Black stared at her white face, his own face paling. It was only for a moment that she let him see all she could show him; then she turned and walked away, across the room, and stood with her back to him, her hands clasped before her, her head drooping. The figure she thus presented to him was still that of the princess, but it was also that of the woman who, having for the instant lifted the veil, drops it again, and awaits in proud patience the man’s pronouncement.

Black came slowly toward her—it did not seem possible courteously to address her across the many feet of space she had now put between them. He stopped when he was near enough—and not too near—he seemed to know rather definitely when this point had been reached. But before he could speak Fanny herself broke the stillness. She put out one hand without turning.

“Please don’t come nearer,” she breathed. “I can’t—bear it.”

And then she did turn, lifting to him a face so beseeching, lifting to him for one instant’s gesture arms so imploring, that if there had been in him one impulse towards her he would have been more than man if he had resisted her. But—how could there be in him one impulse towards her when, with every moment in her presence, there had been living more vividly in his remembrance that other moment, now days ago, when he had given Jane Ray—“all he had.” Though never again—never again—should even so brief a glory of experience come to him, rather would he have that one wonderful memory than all that there might be for him in these two outstretched arms.

Yet—how could he but be pitiful—and merciful—to Fanny Fitch? To have offered herself to him, and to have to stand there waiting to be taken or refused—there seemed to him no words too kind in which to make her understand. And yet—how to find words at all!

“You must know,” he said at last, and with difficulty, “that I am—that I have—no way to tell you—how badly I feel to have you tell me this, and to be—unable to——”

“You’re not unable—you’re just afraid. You’ve kept your heart sealed up so long—you’ve been so frightfully discreet—such a model minister—you don’t know at all what you’re putting away from you. It will never come back—you’ll never have the chance again I’m giving you—to live—to live—oh, to live with all there is of you, not just with the nice, proper, priestly side of you!” The passionate voice lifted and dropped again in choking cadences. “You think I couldn’t adapt myself, couldn’t fill the part. I could—I could!—I would do anything you asked of me—become a mystic, like yourself—or——”