We couldn't stop to have even a little supper after the theater, for he was taking a train to New York, whence he was to sail.
His man Holmes (it was the first time I had ever seen him) was at the house when we got back, and had his bag and everything ready, waiting for him. I thought as he was going away on such a long trip he would at least kiss me good-by, and I could not keep from crying when, after we got in, he said right before Holmes, who wouldn't leave the room:
"I'll have to rush now. Be a good girl."
Then he said I was to go down to Mr. Townsend's (his lawyer's) office, and he would tell me about some arrangements he himself had made for me, and I was to write to him every day, though he said nothing about writing to me. He wrote down an address in London where I was to send my letters. The only thing he did that approached a caress was that, when his man went ahead of him down the stairs, he stopped in the upper hall, lifted my face, and gave me a long, searching look. Then he said:
"I'm not likely to think about anything but you, darling." Then he went quickly down the stairs, leaving me sobbing up there.
XXXI
I had enough to occupy my thoughts now without thinking of Bennet. Passionately as I loved Roger, I perceived that night, in a dim sort of way and with a burning remembrance of his brutality to me, that I was fast becoming the infatuated victim of one who was utterly unworthy. He had not hesitated to denounce and accuse me of things of which I was certainly incapable of being guilty. Though he had said I was his cherished and precious girl, and he knew I was a good girl (in the sense the world calls good), yet he did not consider me worthy of being his wife. It irritated him, that poor aspiration of mine. Yet other men, better men than he, men who, I do not doubt, though not possessing his great wealth, were his social equals,—Bennet and my editor,—had not thought me beneath them. I puzzled and tortured myself over it, but I could find no answer.
No one could deny that I was a clever girl. I was not the genius O'Brien and perhaps Roger believed, but I certainly was above the average girl in intelligence. Not many girls of eighteen are writing stories and having them accepted by the magazines. And yet, queerly enough, beyond my one precocious talent, I was in many ways peculiarly gullible and stupid. Why, the girls at the Y. W. C. A. teased me in all sorts of ways because of this, and Estelle used to say a blind beggar could sell me a gold brick at any street corner, and I would believe every word he said. This peculiar streak of credulousness in me was, I suppose, the reason I never found out anything about Mr. Hamilton.