"See here, Mary Allen," he expostulated, "a lot of things have happened since I saw you last. I'm no longer Jimmy Gollop, candy drummer. I'm Mr. James Gollop, Sales Manager for one of the best institutions on earth, and I'm going to make good. I know I shall. I feel it here," and he tapped his breast with his knuckles. She did not observe his gesture, for she had turned still further from him, and was looking out of the window as if half distracted by her own thought.
"Why," he blurted, "you'd be as unhappy without paint as I'd be without work. Rather than have you give it up, I'd—I'd send you down to Maryland to my mother. Why not do that? You'd love her, because everyone does. And she'd love you because—well—just because she couldn't help it. Mary—if you'd only go down there you could have a home—no fussy hotel, and—and—I'd be so happy to——"
She suddenly turned toward him with a tiny gesture, then laughed. He was rather hurt, and felt that possibly she was ridiculing his honest and generous offer. As if she read his thought she came quickly toward him and held out her hand and caught his and said, using the old jocular name, "No, Bill Jones, Pirate, it isn't money! But don't think for an instant that I don't appreciate the offer that comes from your big, fine heart! I do! And—I wish I could accept it. I think I know what your home is like—and what your mother is like."
She dropped his hand and now turned toward the easel, smudged a blotch of paint with a slender finger tip in awkward pretense at being interested in her study, and without looking at him said, "It's not money. It's because the man to whom I am engaged to be married disapproves of my little hobby and has asserted so in most emphatic terms."
It seemed to Jim that the whole room was reeling, and that there was a great burst of sound, followed by a stillness so profound that the distressed beating of his heart had become loudly audible. His knees trembled. His hands clutched and quivered. He felt mentally and physically stricken, tried to speak, could utter no sound, and then, to conceal his hurt, turned almost mechanically to the chair she had proffered, groped blindly for its arm, and slowly subsided into it. He was pitifully thankful that she had not observed his distress; that she was still standing there in front of the easel. This betrothal was an intervention that had never entered into any of his thoughts or dreams of her. He had always pictured her as free, quite free, following her whims and ambitions within the limitations of a meager purse. He sat there, stunned, for a moment, and then remembered, dully, that he did not even know her name. The absurdities of his position, and the futilities of all his long aspirations and love dreams seemed magnified through the shock of sudden and bitter knowledge. In a moment of bitter disappointment, he wondered how he had ever dared to advance from the accident of a chance meeting to friendship, and from friendship to love.
"I—I congratulate you," he said, lamely, for want of something better to say.
"On what?" she asked. "Because the man to whom I am engaged doesn't understand what this daubing of mine means to me?"
"No, not on that; but on being betrothed," he replied, and then added, bluntly, "You see,—I—I didn't know it. You never told me. No, you never told me anything about it in all these months in which—in which you've been just Mary Allen, and I, Bill Jones!"
He was not aware of the sorry tragedy in his voice that contrasted so sharply with the banality of his words. He felt that he was but a pitiful jester who was like a clown, compelled to play a merry part when there was anguish in his mind. But—he must play.
"I don't know why I was such a fool!" he declared. "Why I thought it could go on in this way—with you as Mary Allen, and I as Bill Jones. You see—I may as well tell the truth—now that it's come to this—You see, I didn't know your name, or who you were! I thought on the day that we met in Fifth Avenue you were someone in the trade, and I was ashamed to admit that I'd forgotten where you came from. You knew who I was, but I couldn't remember you. And so, after that first meeting, I was a coward. I'm a coward now, Mary! Now that it doesn't matter!"