“I’ll get you a swell apartment up in the West Seventies,” he said, “and you can put up a bluff at studying something—music ’r acting ’r something like that—just a stall to keep your folks in the dark. I’ll get a wealthy dame I know to take an interest in you, see? She’ll be the blind. She’s a good sport and she’ll do anything for me. You’ll be known as a protégée of hers, and your family’ll never know I’m putting up the coin. Why, it’s done ev’ry day in the year.”
“So, I’m to be your miss-tress, like they say in the novels,” Blanche answered, with a struggle of irritation and tired assent going on within her. “I suppose I ought to bawl you out for your nerve, but I won’t take the trouble. I’d like to really study something, and get somewheres, but I’m not so sure I want to take it like that.”
“What’s the matter, don’t you like my style?” he asked.
“You’re not so bad ’s far as you go,” she replied, “but I don’t happen to be in love with you.”
“What of it?” he asked. “You know you like to be with me—that’s what counts. Most of this love stuff’s a lot of hokum, that’s all. I never saw a couple in my life that stayed crazy about each other for more than two years, and that’s a world’s record. If they stick to each other after that it’s because they haven’t got nerve enough to make a break, ’r for the sake of their kid, ’r a hundred other bum reasons. But they’ve lost the first, big kick ev’ry time—don’t fool yourself.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said slowly. “’F a girl finds a man that loves her for what she is—her ways of acting and talking—I don’t see why they can’t get along even ’f they do get tired of hugging and kissing all the time. They’ve got to have the same kind of minds, that’s it.”
“We-ell, how’s my mi-ind diff’rent from yours?” he asked, amused and not quite comprehending (she sure had acquired a bunch of fancy ideas since his last meeting with her).
“It’s this way, you don’t like to read much, real good books, I mean,” she replied, “and you never go to swell symf’ny concerts where they play beautiful music, and you don’t care for paintings and statues and things like that. I never thought much of them myself, once upon a time, but I’m beginning to get wise to what I’ve been missing. I mean it. I’ve been going around for a long time with a fellow that likes those things, and I’m not as dumb’s I used to be.”
Campbell laughed inwardly—doggone if she hadn’t become “highbrow” since their last time together! This was an interesting, though absurd, turn of affairs. She had probably been mixing with some writer or painter, who had stuffed her head with “a-artistic” poppycock, which she didn’t understand herself, but which she valued because it was her idea of something grand and elegant. Girls like Blanche were often weathercocks—not satisfied with their own lack of talent and ready to be moved by any outburst of novel and impressive hot air that came along. Well, it would be easy to simulate a response to her new interests and captivate her in that way, unless the other man had already captured her.
“How do you know I don’t like those things?” he asked. “I’ve never talked much about them because I never knew they mattered to you. I thought you believed that this guy, Art, was a second cousin to artesian wells. How was I to know?”