“You’ve got to do nothing of the sort!” Rod angrily exclaimed. “Cis, don’t be an idiot! What good would it do? Could you take back what you told me? You’d be a miserable sinner if you would, provided you could! Mr. Lucas is happy while he is ignorant; let him alone in that form of bliss! No harm is done, nobody wronged, nobody the wiser. What good would you do by telling on yourself? All you’d do is to mess up the situation. You’ll be married and out of the office soon. My wife isn’t going to keep on in business! Thanks to your tip, my dearest, we’ll have a nice little increase to our income.”
“I can’t answer one of your common-sense statements, Rod,” said Cis slowly, “but I can’t go along with them. Mr. Lucas thinks what isn’t true. Truth is the only basis for dealing with anyone. I’ve got to tell him exactly what I did; I can’t breathe in his office while I know that when he looks at me he sees what isn’t there. I don’t care to own up, Rod dear, but when there isn’t solid rock-bottom of truth under my dealings, my relations with a person, I feel like that Irishman who didn’t like aeroplanes because ‘when they stopped there wasn’t any place to stand to crank the thing!’ When someone is deceived in you, if you don’t make it straight, it’s worse than playing with ghosts—they touch you and you touch them, yet neither of you is there at all!”
Rodney looked at Cicely for a long time, an inscrutable expression upon his face. She made a little grimace at him, twisting her lips and showing her dimple, but he did not respond with a smile. She thought that he was displeased with her, and again coaxed him with pursed-up lips, but Rodney’s eyes were steady, clouded; he looked bothered, plainly was deep in thought.
“I’ll put off telling, Rory O’Moore,” Cis said, misunderstanding him. “If you hate to have me tell, I won’t tell right away, but I’ve got to tell sometime, please, Rod!”
It was a week later that Rod said to Cis: “Will you come with me to the apartment to-morrow, Holly? I’ve had sent in a few odd chairs, and a table that hit me exactly where I live, and I’d like your opinion of them, Mistress-of-the-Mansion-elect!” They had agreed to pick out the furnishings of their home together, but Cis looked delighted at this departure from the bargain on Rodney’s part, and gladly said that she would go with him to see his selections.
They had changed rôles for the week that had just passed; Cis, relieved by her definitely announced plan to confess her wrong-doing to Mr. Lucas, felt better about it, and had been bubbling over with fun and high spirits. Rodney, on the contrary, had been cast-down; Cis repeatedly caught him looking at her with such a sober and apprehensive look, that she had once been moved to expostulate with him.
“For pity’s sake, Rory O’Moore,” she cried, “stop looking at me as if you were saying: ‘Doesn’t she look natural! Poor thing, she was so young, and with all her faults I love her still! Not so still as this, though!’ I’m not nearly as dead as I might be; in fact I’m quite lively, I think. What’s wrong with me—or you—old chap?”
“I’m deciding something, Holly-berry,” Rodney answered, not smiling at her nonsense. “I’m wondering what you’d want me to do about a certain thing, on which I can’t consult you without giving the thing away, so you never would have a chance to decide it, after all. Sounds mysterious, but it’s the best I can do by way of answering you. I’m wondering how you’d react under something I’ve a mind to do. You’re the frankest human being I ever knew, Cis; you never have hidden meanings, nor lay a plot; you act outright and talk right out! Yet I’m not one bit sure of what you’d do under untried conditions; you’re capable of doing one of two completely opposite things.”
“Well,” said Cis lightly, in too contented a frame of mind to pay close attention to what Rodney might be implying, “I’m glad you can’t tell which way I’d jump. Sounds quite impressive, but probably it’s something like whether I’d go back on my bronzey little library and go in for red, after I’d sworn no red should come into my happy home! I’m more interesting if I’m uncertain; that’s why you like women, you men, my Rory; they keep you guessing! I’m dreadfully afraid you do know all I think, and what I’d do, but it’s dear of you to pretend I’m a nice sphinxy-sphynx!”
Rodney laughed; he had instantly regretted speaking as he had spoken, and he was glad that Cis’s incorrigible light-heartedness prevented her from taking him seriously, gave him longer to decide whether he should pursue his original plan, and tell Cis the secret which he meant to tell her after their marriage, or put himself at her mercy by telling her at once. He knew that this was the only honorable course; he knew that, if their places were reversed, Cis would deal thus with him.