“Certainly,” she answered; “ask me anything you like.”
“I want to know,” he said, with great deliberation, “whether you have ever been in love?”
Jane stared at him with wide-open eyes. “Don’t think,” he continued, hastily, “that I have any desire to pry into your personal affairs, but for the sake of my book——”
“Oh, the book, by all means,” she answered, rather hardly. “No, I’ve never been in love. However”—flippantly—“I trust I will fall in love some day. It will be a new experience, at least. You see, ever since I was a very little girl I have been jobbed out——”
“Jobbed out!” exclaimed the puzzled Ormsby.
“Passed around from one Willoughby to the other,” explained Jane, impatiently. “My father was the improvident one of the Willoughby connection, and he married an equally improvident but awfully pretty girl, my mother. They died within a short time of each other”—Jane caught her breath, but continued without a trace of feeling in her voice—“when I was just two years old. The Willoughbys married me to De Mille when I was nineteen. There you have the story of my career in a nutshell.” She rose abruptly. “I must be going,” she said, picking up her hat.
“Just a minute,” interposed Ormsby, almost pleadingly, motioning her to resume her seat. Jane sat down again and looked at him expectantly. His manner seemed to have changed suddenly. His cold gray eyes had taken on a softer, a more human, expression, and they fastened themselves on hers with such an intent gaze that, though she tried to meet it boldly, she found her own glance wavering, and the hot color surged up in her face.
“Supposing, Mrs. De Mille,” he began, apparently unmindful of her confusion, “that a chap different from the sort you’d been accustomed to, one with less polish and with his own way—perhaps a most uncertain one—to make, should come to you and tell you that he loved you—no, wait!” Jane’s lips had parted, as though she were about to speak. “And supposing you felt,” he continued, “that in spite of the man’s uncouthness he was capable of making you love him, if only you consented to give him a chance, do you think——” He paused and studied her for a second with even a more intent gaze, but her eyes were downcast, and her trembling fingers were rapidly tying and untying knots in her lace handkerchief.
“Look at me, please,” he said, authoritatively. Reluctantly, Mrs. De Mille raised her eyes. Her soul shone in them.
“Do you think that if that man told you that your life with him might be a hard one, that the wanderlust was in his bones, and that when it took possession of him he had to fare forth, come what might, you would have the courage to put your hand in his—don’t stir.”