And she was silent for a while. "Robin," she said, at last, "you'll never understand why women like you. You will always think it is because they admire you for some quality or another. It is really because they pity you. You are such a baby, riding for a fall—No, I don't mean the boyishness you trade upon. I have known for a long while all that was just put on. And, oh, how hard you've tried to be a boy of late!"
"And I thought I had fooled you, Bettie! Well, I never could. I am sorry, though, if I have been annoyingly clumsy—"
"But you were doing it for me," she said. "You were doing it because you thought I'd like it. Oh, can't you understand that I know you are worthless, and that you have never loved any human being in all your life except that flibbertigibbet Stella Blagden, and that I know, too, you have so rarely failed me! If you were an admirable person, or a person with commendable instincts, or an unselfish person, or if you were even in love with me, it wouldn't count of course. It is because you are none of these things that it counts for so much to see you honest with me—sometimes,—and even to see you scheming and play-acting—and so transparently!—just to bring about a little pleasure for me. Oh, Robin, I am afraid that nowadays I love you because of your vices!"
"And I you because of your virtues," said I; "so that there is no possible apprehension of either affection ever going into bankruptcy. Therefore the affair is settled; and we will be married in November."
"Well," Bettie said, "I suppose that somebody has to break you of this habit of getting married next November—"
Then, and only then, my hands were lifted from her shoulders. And we began to talk composedly of more impersonal matters.
5
It was two days later that John Charteris came to Fairhaven; and I met him the same afternoon upon Cambridge street. The little man stopped short and in full view of the public achieved what, had he been a child, were most properly describable as making a face at me.
"That," he explained, "expresses the involuntary confusion of Belial on re-encountering the anchorite who escaped his diabolical machinations. But, oh, dear me! haven't you been translated yet? Why, I thought the carriage would have called long ago, just as it did for Elijah."
"Now, don't be an ass, John. I was rather idiotic, I suppose—"