“I’ll see about it,” he answered, dully. “I wish I’d never met you. You’ve never brought me anything but sadness, after all I did for you, and there’s no use keeping it up forever.”
“Lou, don’t say that,” she replied. “You know I’ve been honest with you. I never made any promises, never, and I’ve always told you just how I felt. I’m miserable about the whole thing as it is, and you can just bet I’ll never forget you, Lou. I hung on to you all this time because I needed you, that’s true, but I’d never have chased you if you hadn’t wanted to be with me.”
“Well, it’s over, I guess,” he said, “and talking won’t help it any, now.”
He felt a self-disparaging apathy. He had poured out his thoughts and ideas to this girl, and set her to thinking as she never had before, and this was his reward, eh? The whole world was just a selfish swamp. She had taken his gifts because they were needed revelations to her, and now she would save her love for some other man, who’d reverse the process and plunder her of all she had, and feast on the elastic dream of her body. No one ever loved you unless you walked all over them and made them worship your highhandedness. He had had a last lesson now, and henceforth he would have a cheeky, appraising attitude toward every woman he ran across.
After they had traded their farewells—reluctant, empty monosyllables, in which each person was trying to say something more and finding himself unable—Blanche boarded a Ninth Avenue elevated train and rode home, with all of her thoughts and emotions uncertain and sluggish. What was the use of living?—you wound up by hurting the other person, or else he injured you, with neither of you meaning to do it, and then you separated, and accused yourself of selfishness without being able to remedy the matter. But this brother of hers—wait till she got hold of him! She’d give him the worst tongue-lashing of his life, and warn him never to interfere in her affairs again. What did he think she was—a doormat? Brother or no brother, he was a cruel, stupid man, and things would have to come to an issue between them. She was self-supporting and of age, and if her family persisted in treating her as though she were a slave, she would have to leave their roof.
As she walked into the living-room of her home, she found her mother seated beside the table, darning socks and munching at an apple. She threw her hat and coat upon the seamed, leatherine couch, while her mother asked: “How come you’re back so soon, Blanie, dear? Ten o’clock, and you walkin’ in! I think the world’s comin’ right to an end, I do that. D’you have a fight with the man you was with? Tell your ma what happened now.”
“Has Harry been back?” Blanche asked.
“No, he never gets back till early mornin’, and so does Mabel, an’ Phil, an’ your pa. None of you ever stays to home to keep me comp’ny.”
“I know you get lonely, ma,” Blanche answered, stroking her mother’s hair for a moment and trying to feel much more concerned than she was. “Didn’t Mrs. O’Rourke, or Katie, come down to-night?”
“They did, sure enough, but it’s not like havin’ your own fam’ly with you,” her mother replied.