“This is great, Rand,” remarked Seabury. “How is it you never brought me here?”
“I saved it for Madame. What does she think of it?”
“Fas-scinating. I feel quite like a thorough-bred horse.” Then she looked at him gratefully. “And one is not—on ex-hibition.”
“I don’t want to exhibit you,” rejoined her host. “You’ll find that out.”
She did find it out in the weeks that followed. They dined frequently at “The Mews,” sometimes with Seabury, more often alone.
At first she protested. She could not! But in the end Randolph won out. They arrived always at six when the place was practically empty and by seven-thirty she was at the theater.
As the weather turned warmer they drove occasionally to the country and back in time for the performance. She never permitted him to call for her but arranged to meet him at the theater. They never went to conspicuous hotels or restaurants. He seemed to enjoy being with her away from the stare of the world. One Sunday in April when they had planned to lunch at an inn that dots the shore of the Hudson, he appeared with two hampers and announced that they were [41] ]going to picnic. They left the car at the top of a slope, scrambled down and unpacked the baskets with the anticipation of boy and girl off for a holiday. She pulled off her hat with its floating veil and sat cross-legged on the rug he had spread under a willow tree.
Sitting there watching him, this man so intensely real, so intensely himself, a sense of infinite sadness swept over her. She wanted just for to-day to drop all sham. Not that her pose was ever difficult. Like all affectation used incessantly, she was no longer conscious of it. It was herself. But in these rare days spent with Randolph in the brimming sunlight, soft with young green things, she wanted with a ridiculously hopeless yearning to let him glimpse Elizabeth Parsons, the girl who would have let her hair fly in the wind for sheer joy of springtime, the girl who lived only in hidden moments.
Sometimes she compromised by letting Parsinova express Elizabeth’s thoughts, her ideals, separating the two women only by the breadth of an accent. Often she caught him looking at her curiously, as if trying to link some simply expressed idea of living with the reputation of the woman sitting opposite him. But more frequently they were content to enjoy the moment, tramping through the woods, discovering new sun-flecked trails, drinking in the sweetness of April and companionship.
He had suggested that he stop for her at her home but she put him off with excuses, obvious and sometimes lame.