What was the use? He stopped before adding another spark to her wrath.
“I suppose you want to marry that woman––Mary Faithful, who has loved you so long and made herself so useful! She was clever enough to pretend to efface herself and go to work for someone else, but I dare say you have seen her as often as before. Oh, are you surprised I know? I gave you the credit of being above such a thing, but Trudy told me that this woman had told her the truth––so you see even your Mary Faithful cannot be trusted. You had better turn monk, Steve, be done with the whole annoying pack of us! Anyway, Trudy came running to me, but I never lost sleep over the rumour. I felt you were above such things, as I said, but presently little 295 indications––straws, you know––told me she cared; and if a woman cares for a man and is able to pass several hours each day in his employ, unless she is cross-eyed or a blithering idiot she cannot fail to win the game! Now can she, Stevuns?”
Steve raised his hand in protest. “Please leave her out of it.”
“So––we must talk about my being a failure, my father clipping your wings of industry and all that––yet we must not mention a woman who has loved you––and gossiped about it.”
“She did not! You know Trudy––you know her nature,” he interrupted.
“Taking up her defence! Noble Stevuns! Then you do reciprocate––and you are planning one of those ready-to-be-served bungalows with even a broom closet and lovely glass doorknobs, where Mary may gambol about in organdie and boast of the prize pie she has baked for your supper. Oh, Stevuns, you are too funny for words!”
She laughed, but there was a malicious sparkle in her eyes. She was carrying off the situation as best she knew how, for she did not comprehend its true significance, its highest motive. Underneath her veneer of sarcasm and ridicule she was hurt, stabbed––quite helpless.
With her father’s spirit she resolved to take the death gamely––and make Steve as ridiculous as possible, to have as good a time as she could out of such a sorry ending. But she knew as she stood facing him, so tired and heavy-eyed, the rejected sheet of figures fallen on the brocaded sofa between them, that it was she who met and experienced lasting defeat.
By turns she had been the spoiled child of fortune, the romantic parasite, the mad butterfly, the advanced woman, the Bolshevik de luxe; and finally and for all time to come she was confronted with the last possibility––there was no forked road for her––that of a shrewd, cold flirt. She realized too late the injustice done her under the name of a father’s loving protection. Moreover, she determined never to let herself realize to any great extent the awfulness of the injustice. It was, as Steve said, a common fate these days––there was solace in the fact of never being alone in her defeat. But at five minutes after twelve she had glimpsed the situation and regretted briefly all she was denied. Still it was an impossibility to cease being a Gorgeous Girl.