For Anthony could not see but that the discussion itself was a sign of his growing importance in her eyes. To him it probably would have been natural enough to have her refuse him and then decline to see him at all. But that did not suit Horatia. She wanted him to be just a friend—to stop loving her. He was comparatively acquiescent. He told her that he thought she might some time come to care for him, and when she protested in real horror, he was gentlemanly enough to yield the point and adjust his conversation to the comfortable tone she wanted. It cheered Horatia immensely. She was too inexperienced to know that men have always yielded to women in form when they won a victory in fact. There was a new vigor in Anthony’s walk as he left her after that.
That talk straightened “everything out,” according to Horatia, and she went to her window and drew a long breath of relief. She was clean again and fit for Jim. How tremendously she loved Jim that day! She wanted to bring him something finer, something cleaner, something purer than anyone in the world had ever brought to any man. She wanted to bring him all that the world could give a man. Her ardor almost frightened him that night. It was so great—so tempestuous.
“How can women play with men they love?” she wondered. “I suppose it’s because they don’t love. You’re warned to keep your distance—to give a little at a time. Why I—I want to give everything in the world all at once—everything. And then I wouldn’t have enough. I want to do foolish, extravagant things to show you my love—only because it is love they wouldn’t be foolish or extravagant.”
“Do you know how I love you?” asked Jim. “I love you as a man loves a woman once in a long, long while, so much that all the primal things, the violent things have been refined out of it. I love you so much that the lightest touch of your hand on my shoulder turns me to fire and so much that if it would harm a hair of your head or bring a shadow of trouble to your soul, I’d never see you again. I love you because you are beautiful of body—that least and first—and I love your fine, clean soul which is like a candlelight before the altar of life, and I love—most of all, your warm, warm heart that warms everything which is near it at all. No—most of all I love you and I’d love you if you were ugly and vicious and cold—because you’d be you. You attached me and you’ll never shake me off now.”
No—for all his protestations that he would give her up if it were best for her, his arms around her did not seem to be willing to even give her up for a moment. They were talking a little more practically now. The Journal was really commencing to pay and an amazing offer had come to Langley offering him an editorship on an Eastern paper. But he had refused it, with Horatia’s connivance, because they both felt that they did not want to leave so soon the lake and the city which had brought them together and the familiar office.
“A flat it will have to be.”
“But some day there will be the house with the dark oak hall,” he promised. “Some day there will be those sunny guest-rooms. Once, Horatia, I had a little money and I lost it all. It was what my father left me. Well, I never missed it. I didn’t care—much. But now I covet that money. I see things in windows that I want to give you. I want to smother you with presents.”
“You’re a capitalist in spirit for all your protestations!”
“Don’t you dare tell anyone, but I’ve the making of a rare one in me. All that I care about just now is giving things to you—myself and other things.”
“You care about your work.”