"Whether he does or not, it's a dangerous fascination for both of you."
Vacillating days followed for Pat. There was a week in which she did not trust herself to see Leo. He telephoned and wrote frantically. She did not answer his letters. But one day she met him fortuitously on the street, and went to the studio with him. There he broke all bounds, poured out the fire of his heart upon her: he loved her, wanted her, needed her; she was part of his genius, without her he could never reach his full artistic stature. She loved him, too; he felt it; he knew it; he defied her to deny it, and she found that, under the compulsion of his presence, she could not. He was going to Boston on the following day, for a week. Would she come and join him, if only for a day? She could make up some tale for her family; pretend to be staying with a friend. And he would take her to a great singing-master, the greatest, a friend of his whom he wanted to hear and try her voice. Wouldn't she trust herself to him and come?
Pat denied him vehemently. But she was stirred and troubled to her own passionate depths by his stormy yet controlled passion. He had not so much as touched her hand.
In the hallway, as they went out, she turned to him and yielded herself into his arms.
"Oh, well!" she murmured, her voice fluttering in her throat. "I don't care. I'll come. Only—don't rush me. Give me time."
They parted with the one kiss of that embrace. Instantly she had agreed, the spirit of adventure rose within her. She was recklessly jubilant.
Three days of alternating morbid self-examination and flushed excitement followed. She looked forward to the meeting not so much with conscious physical anticipation as with the sense of something vivid and bold and new coming, as relief, into the too monotonous pattern of life.
The rendezvous was arranged by letter. She was to take a late afternoon train, and he was to be at the Back Bay to meet her.
Looking from the window as the train pulled in she saw him restlessly pacing the platform on the wrong side. He had on a new overcoat which did not fit him and was incongruously glossy as compared with his untidy hair and rumpled soft hat. As his coat slumped open, she was conscious of an unpressed suit underneath. Probably greasy! At the moment he dropped one of the brand new gloves in his hand—she could not recall ever having seen him wear gloves—and bent awkwardly to recover it. His head protruded; his collar, truant from its retaining rear button, hunched mussily up, and she looked down with a dismal revulsion of the flesh, upon an expanse of sallow, shaven neck.
Unbidden, vividly intrusive, there rose to the eyes of her quickening imagination the image of Cary Scott, always impeccable of dress and carriage, hard-knit of frame, exhaling the atmosphere of smooth skin and hard muscle. In fancy she breathed the very aroma of him, clean, tingling, masculine, and felt again the imperative claim of his arms.