“When do you think a man can begin to be good? Do you think I am so utterly rotten that no decent women may ever dare know me? Come now, Fanny.”
“There are plenty of girls you can know if you want to—who don’t live in boarding houses and starve their way through art schools.”
“But they haven’t her eyes; they don’t carry their heads like goddesses,” he persisted.
“You’ve seen too many eyes in too many divine heads. I tell you, it won’t do! If you will think of it a minute you will see that only a word is enough to wreck that girl’s life. Do you suppose you can call on her at her boarding house? Are you going to walk with her to her lessons? Do you quite see yourself taking her to concerts and to church Sunday mornings? My big brother, if you don’t stop being preposterous I shall get angry.”
“Oh, no. Please don’t! I’m disappointed; I thought you had advised me to be good and marry and settle down.”
“Marry! That girl? Wayne, you are impossible!”
“Very likely; but the girl isn’t so impossible. I hadn’t thought of marrying her, but the idea doesn’t exactly terrify me. She’s an immensely interesting person—she haunts me like a theme in music. She’s poor and if I could save her from the pitfalls of art—the failures, the heartache of failing to arrive—that isn’t so impossible, is it?”
“Yes, it’s absolutely out of the question. And if you don’t let her alone I’ll ship her back where she came from; just one more of these coincidences and I’ll do that. We’ve had enough marriages in the family, I hope, to last for some time.”
“Ah! So this bitterness of spirit is not all for me? Has John taken to evil ways?”
“What’s the matter at father’s? Why was Addie crying this morning when I went in to see her?”