By degrees of course she had managed to pick up the threads of her life again. Who did not? And now nature, cynical, contemptuous of the dreams and longings which possess men, now lavished upon her that which she and Vivian had longed for in vain. Fame? It was hers. Money? A Score of fortunes had sought her in vain. Friendship? She could scarcely drive it from the door. She was successful.
But what mattered it now? Was it not a part of the routine, shabby method of life to first disappoint one—sweat and agonize one—and then lavish luxury upon one,—afterwards?
“I want nothing. And if any one calls, I am not in.”
And so it was that after a time Harry descending upon her with his millions, and seeking solace for himself through her sympathy, she had succumbed to that—or him—as a kindly thing to do. He too had confessed to a wretched dole of difficulties that had dogged his early years. He too had been disappointed in love, comfort—almost everything until too late. In his earliest years he had risen at four in a mill-town to milk cows and deliver milk, only later to betake himself, barefooted and in the snow, to a mill to work. Later still he had worked in a jewelry factory, until his lungs had failed. And had then taken to the open road as a peripatetic photographer of street children in order to recover his health. But because of this work—the chemistry, and physics of photography—he had interested himself in chemistry and physics—later taking a “regular job,” as he phrased it, in a photographic supply house and later still opening a store of his own. It was here that he had met Kesselbloom, who had solved the mystery of the revolving shutter and the selenium bath. Financing him and his patents, he had been able to rise still more, to fly really, as though others were standing still. The vast Dagmar Optical and Photographic Company. It was now his, with all its patents. And the Baker-Wile Chemical Company. Yes, now he was a multimillionaire, and lonely—as lonely as she was. Strange that he and she should have met.
“No, I will not see any one.”
So now, through her, he was seeking the youth which could be his no more. Because of some strange sense of comradeship in misery, perhaps, they had agreed to share each other’s unhappiness!
“You say Mr. Harris telephoned from the station?”
Yes, as he had told her in his brooding hours, at fifty it had suddenly struck him that his plethora of wealth was pointless. As a boy he had not learned to play, and now it was too late. Already he was old and lonely. Where lay his youth or any happiness?
And so now—nearly icy-cold the two of them, and contemning life dreams—they were still facing life together. And here he was this day, at her door or soon would be, fresh from financial labors in one city and another. And returning to what? With a kind of slavish and yet royal persistence he still pursued her—to comfort—as well as to be comforted, and out of sheer weariness she endured him. Perhaps because he was willing to await her mood, to accept the least crumb of her favor as priceless. The only kinship that existed between them was this unhappy youth of his and her sympathy for it, and his seeming understanding of and sympathy for the ills that had beset her. Supposing (so his argument had run) that the burden of this proposed friendship with him were to be made very light, the lightest of all burdens, that upon closer contact he proved not so hopeless or dull as he appeared, could she not—would she not—endure him? (The amazing contrarieties and strangenesses of things!) And so friendship, and later marriage under these strange conditions. Yet she could not love him, never had and never would. However it might have seemed at first—and she did sympathize with and appreciate him—still only because of her mother and sister and the fact that she herself needed some one to fall back upon, a support in this dull round of living, had caused her to go on as long as she had.
How deserted that wading-pool looked at evening, with all the children gone!