“Because I don’t choose to have him.”
“Was the next man that come a preacher, too?”
“No, mother.”
“Who was he?”
“He was Richard Malleson’s—fool.”
CHAPTER IV
THE NEW MOON
When Barry Malleson left the house of Mrs. Bradley he left it with his head in a rose-cloud. The woman had fascinated him. Plainly and cheaply garbed as he had seen her, plain and cheap as her environment was, devoid, as she must be, of all social standing and of all the social graces, she had, nevertheless, fascinated him. Not that he permitted himself, under the circumstances, to think of making love to her; that would have been incongruous and inexcusable. But she had surrounded him with an atmosphere pervaded and enriched by her own personality, and from that atmosphere he could not, nor did he try to, escape.
He did not overtake the Reverend Mr. Farrar on his way back to the city, but he did overtake Miss Chichester. She was walking along hurriedly in an unattractive suburb; she was alone, and dusk was falling, and the only decent thing for him to do was to pull up to the curb and ask her to ride into the city. She was not loath to accept his invitation. It pleased her, not alone because the acceptance of it would help her on her way, but because also it would give her, for a brief time, the exclusive companionship of Barry Malleson. There was no just reason why Miss Chichester should not desire the companionship of Barry, nor why she was not entitled to it. They had known each other from childhood. She was a member of his social set; she belonged to the church which he attended; she was not far from his own age; she was fairly prepossessing in appearance; and she was, so far as any romantic connection was concerned, entirely unattached. Moreover, she admired Barry. Perhaps Barry did not know it, but if he did not it was no fault of Miss Chichester’s. While maidenly modesty would not permit her to make open love to him, there are a thousand ways in which a young woman may manifest her preference for a man with the utmost propriety. Miss Chichester exercised all of them. But, so far, they had been without avail. Easily impressed as Barry was with feminine charms, he had not been impressed with those of Miss Chichester. Therefore he had been unresponsive. Not that he was entirely unaware of her preference for him—dull as he may have been, he could not have failed to understand something of that—but he simply ignored it. The strenuousness of his duties as vice-president of the Malleson Manufacturing Company left him no time to bestow on a love affair in which he was not especially interested. It was, therefore, with no great amount of enthusiasm that he asked Miss Chichester to ride with him this day. Besides, he had something to think about, and he would have preferred to be alone. But he handed her into his car with as much courtesy as though she had been his wife or his sweetheart.
“You’re a long way from home, Jane?” he said, inquiringly.