“I am mad about it! I'm always running round to concerts; and I'd walk from Battery to Bronx to hear a good violinist.”
Fiddles and Irish hearts. Swiftly came the vision of Hawksley fiddling the heart out of this lonely girl—if he had the chance. And he, Cutty, was going to fascinate her—with what? He rose and took her by the shoulders, bringing her round so that the light was full in her face. Slate-blue eyes.
“Kitty, what would you say if I kissed you?” Inwardly he asked: “Now, what the devil made me say that?”
The sinister and cynical idea leaped from its ambush. “Why, Cutty, I—I don't believe I should mind. It's—it's you!” Vile wretch that she was!
Cutty, noting the lily succeeding the rose, did not kiss her. Fate has a way of reversing the illogical and giving it logical semblance. It was perfectly logical that he should not kiss her; and yet that was exactly what he should have done. The fatherliness of the salute—and he couldn't have made it anything else—would have shamed Kitty's peculiar state of mind out of existence and probably sent back to its eternal sleep that which was strangely reawaking in his lonely heart.
“Forgive me, Kitty. That wasn't exactly nice of me, even if I was trying to be funny.”
She tore away from him, flung herself upon the divan, her face in the pillows, and let down the dam.
This wild sobbing—apparently without any reason terrified Cutty. He put both hands into his hair, but he drew them out immediately without retaining any of the thinning gray locks. Done up, both of them; that was the matter. He longed to console her, but knew not what to say or how to act. He had not seen a woman weep like this in so many years that he had forgotten the remedies.
Should he call the nurse? But that would only add to Kitty's embarrassment, and the nurse would naturally misinterpret the situation. He couldn't kneel and put his arms round her; and yet it was a situation that called for arms and endearments. He had sense enough to recognize that. Molly's girl crying like that, and he able to do nothing! It was intolerable. But what was she weeping about?
Covering the divan was a fine piece of Bokhara embroidery. He drew this down over Kitty and tucked her in, turned off the light, and proceeded to his bedroom.