# Young Love (Jordan)

... her tired eyes flashed at him. "I don't want to be unkind, but you're beginning to annoy me. Unless you promise never to speak of love or marriage to me again, I must ask you to—well, to try staying away for a while. I'm awfully sorry to hurt you, Bertie, but, to be frank, I don't think the hurt goes very deep. If the feeling itself were deep you couldn't make a joke and a game of it as you've done for the last two years, making yourself and me the laughing-stock of every one who knows us."
Young Love
BY ELIZABETH JORDAN
THE dinner had been a success; now the evening was over, and all the guests had gone but one. Upon this one Miss Janet Varick, sister of the bachelor host, and shamelessly deserted by that weary gentleman, turned a compelling eye.
"Good night, Bertie," she remarked, allowing a certain drowsiness to creep into her voice. "Don't let me keep you up."
Mr. Herbert Gildersleeve favored her with his most radiant smile—a smile which, to his secret horror, always brought into play a deep dimple in his left cheek. This dimple did not go with his athletic record, but he had been privately assured that the record, so to speak, "carried" it. At least few mentioned it in his hearing. The unmasculine effect of the dimple was also counteracted by a strong jaw—strong for such a young person—the lines of which were especially firm at this moment, as he settled more comfortably into his chair.
"I'll go in an hour or two," he promised. "In the mean time cast your memory back over the brilliant festivity we have just adorned, and answer one question: With the exception of yourself, who was the most entertaining person at the table?"
Miss Varick's reply was prompt, for she was just. Moreover, she was sleepy.
"You were," she conceded, and turned a yearning gaze upon the clock.
Bertie nodded. "Glad you noticed it," he said. "I noticed it myself. I held them enthralled, without effort. Toward the end I realized that they'd never leave if I kept on, so I subsided; and when they saw it was for good they tore themselves away. I could have kept them," he added, proudly, "till breakfast-time, if there had been any need of it."
"I thought you were going to," corroborated his hostess. "Good night. You've been splendid, but I'm sure you need rest."
"I don't know what we'd have done without me," continued Mr. Gildersleeve, gazing dreamily at her. "The way I rescued you from Arthur Murray's analysis of the political situation was simply masterly. And few things could be neater than the tact with which I kept May Allen from telling that Gilbert story, with Gilbert's first wife at the table!"
"If you call it neat to upset a glass of claret," murmured his listener.
"Better a stain on the table-cloth than a strain on your guests," responded Bertie, oracularly. He studied his well-shaped pumps admiringly, lost in the charm of agreeable reminiscences. "I thought," he added, after waiting in vain for an echo of his tributes from her lips, "the experience might make you realize how handy I'd be around the house all the time, and especially at the head of a table of our own. Did it?"
He studied her expression hopefully for an instant. Then, seeing her eyebrows pucker and her slipper tap the floor impatiently, he relapsed into depression.
"It didn't," he murmured, pensively.
Her lips twitched a trifle, but when she spoke her voice held the accents of sustained but sorely tried patience with which one addresses a refractory child.
"Bertie," she began, "in five minutes you're going home. But first I've got to say something. There aren't many certain things in this world, but one of the few is this: You must stop telling me you love me. You must stop urging me to marry you. Because"—she was very serious now—"you don't really love me, and I don't love you, and deep in our hearts we both realize it perfectly. And it isn't nice to go on making a game of something that is a big and vital interest to those who take life seriously."
It was not easy to bring out the final words, for he was staring at her like the small boy of eight he had been when she first knew him, and his face bore the same hurt, puzzled look it used to wear when she, a "temperamental" infant of the same tender age, had flown at him in one of her sudden childish tempers. It was hard to hurt Bertie, her lifelong playmate, schoolmate, chum, and friend, but Bertie was becoming impossible. She proceeded to make her meaning clear.
"Don't you see?" she continued. "We can't possibly go on like this. You make love to me at all times, at all seasons, and in all places, and you place me in the most absurd positions. I don't think I shall ever quite forget," she added, somberly, "the expression of that conductor's face when you put me on his car yesterday, paid my fare, bade me good-by, and then lingered on the platform to propose to me, while he stood waiting to give the starting signal."
Bertie grinned reminiscently. "It suddenly came over me that trolley-cars are dangerous," he defended himself, "and that something might happen to you. Besides, you had on a new hat, and you looked so sweet—"
Her face softened, but she interrupted him.
"When you proposed at the Philharmonic concert the other night, old Mrs. Hunter, who sat next to me, heard every word. She pretended to be asleep, but she wasn't. I distinctly saw her smile."
"She enjoyed it," admitted the young man. "Told me so afterward. Suggested some arguments I'd left out. She remarked," he added, thoughtfully, "that she didn't see how you could resist me."
"Moreover," continued Miss Varick, ignoring the interruption, "your habit of sending me five or six postal cards every day, asking if I haven't changed my mind, interests the servants but maddens me."
"Does it, really?" inquired Mr. Gildersleeve, sitting up with sudden interest. "Now that's strange." He leaned toward her eagerly, emphasizing his points with an impressive forefinger. "You see, I've been reading one of those French psychological chaps on love. He says the vital thing is to keep yourself before the loved one's mind every minute, no matter how you do it, and that it helps to have those around her familiar with your hopes because they can mentally assist you. I've had some thought of speaking to Kawa and the cook," he added, musingly, "but I haven't had a really good chance. I suppose I might send each of them a postal," he reflected, aloud.
"Bertie Gildersleeve! If you dare!" Her voice had a razor-like edge to it now, her tired eyes flashed at him. "But I don't think you will after I've finished," she added with meaning. "It all amounts to this: I don't want to be unkind, but you're beginning to annoy me. Unless you promise never to speak of love or marriage to me again, I must ask you to—well, to try staying away for a while."
The young man sat up suddenly under the words, the pink of his handsome face deepening to an unbecoming crimson. For what seemed a long time he looked at her in silence. Then, "You mean that?" he asked, slowly.
She nodded. "I do," she said, "and it's final. I'm awfully sorry to hurt you, Bertie, but, to be frank, I don't think the hurt goes very deep. If the feeling itself were deep you couldn't make a joke and a game of it as you've done for the last two years, making yourself and me the laughing-stock of every one who knows us."
He rose, a sudden gravity draping him like a mantle. In it he looked strange to her, and, for the moment, much older than his years.
"I understand," he said. "I didn't before. Naturally, if I had, I wouldn't have kept on annoying you. A man doesn't deliberately annoy the girl he loves. As to not being in earnest—well"—he laughed a little—"you know my fool way. I put my silly nonsense into everything I do, because I can't help it. I'm built so. My love for you is there, but"—he held out his hand and smiled at her—"it sha'n't annoy you again."
She laid her hand in his, and as he held it the memory of the little boy of long ago swept over her again with a sudden tenderness.
"And you're not cross?" she asked. "It would be horrible to think we weren't going to be friends!"
It was the old Bertie who answered her, his new gravity dropping from him as unexpectedly as he had taken it on.
"We'll be friends, all right," he said, heartily. "We couldn't change that if we tried. Good night."
He was in the hall now, putting on his coat. "Good night," he called again. Then the street door closed after him and she heard his quick step on the sidewalk. For some reason her drowsiness had left her. She stood by the open fire for a few moments, one foot on the fender, watching the dying flames and recalling the details of the little interview. Then, with a satisfied nod, she went slowly up-stairs. She was through with Bertie as an importunate lover, but she had kept him as a friend.
Young Mr. Gildersleeve had been in the habit of dropping into the Varick home three or four evenings a week. It was a hospitable house, and the brother and sister had come to accept him almost as a fixture of their domestic hearthstone. The dinner and his talk with Janet had taken place on Wednesday night. That he did not appear on Thursday did not surprise her. That he did not either call or telephone on Friday was in the nature of a surprise, to which she gave the tribute of a fleeting wonder. Saturday evening, however, he arrived at his usual hour, immaculate, radiant, as of old, and, finding other guests there, resolutely outstayed them, according to his invariable custom. As a small boy, Bertie had never gone home until he had been sent by Janet or her mother. As a young man, he had kept this engaging peculiarity.
"You can't stay any longer, Bertie," she declared now, when they found themselves alone. "I have a headache."
The confession filled Mr. Gildersleeve with interest and sympathy, and stimulated him into the most helpful activity. He advised remedies for the incipient headache. He offered a tablet from a box he carried in his pocket as a souvenir of a headache he had once had last winter. He settled her in the most comfortable easy-chair in the room, and adjusted a pillow at her back—an art in which he had no peer.
"I waited," he said when she was comfortable, "because I have something very important to say."
A sudden rush of anger swept through her. So this was it: he had come with the deliberate purpose of disobeying her—of reopening the subject she had distinctly forbidden him to mention. It was not like him. She was at once disappointed, hurt, and annoyed, and she looked at him with mingled incredulity and reproach. That he would disregard her wishes sooner or later she had felt sure; that he would obey them for at least a week had seemed equally certain.
"Oh, how can you!" she exclaimed. "You know what I told you—"
He interrupted her, his eyes shining.
"I know I'm a selfish beast," he said. "But I can't help it. I've got to talk to you. It's such a big thing."
She leaned back wearily in the big chair. "I can't believe you're doing this," she murmured. "You seem so different from—"
Again he interrupted. "Am I changed?" he asked, radiantly. "Of course I feel that I've lived a thousand years in the last two days, but"—he laughed buoyantly—"I didn't know I showed it so plainly."
She stared at him. His words were easy to understand, but his tone, his manner—she was so puzzled by these that she missed his next sentence, but the following one reached her ears with great distinctness.
"I want you to be the first to know," he was saying, "that I'm going to be married!"
He had said those words. There was no doubt of it, though at first it had seemed impossible, incredible, that he had. And now, sitting facing her, with ecstatic eyes on hers, he waited for her response. It seemed to her a long time before she could speak, but it was only a second or two that she stared at him, her eyes incredulous, questioning, her eyebrows drawn together in the characteristic pucker he knew so well.
"But I don't understand," she stammered. And then, her mind leaping to the inevitable conclusion, her eyes plumbed his with a flash in their depths that reminded him of the tempestuous little girl she had been at eight.
"Unless you mean," she demanded, "that you have been engaged all along and haven't told us?"
He repudiated this charge with vigor. "Of course not!" He waved the thought away. "I've only been engaged since last night."
His voice took on a mellow unction as he spoke. A fatuous smile rested on his lips. "Since last night," he repeated, dreamily, and gazed out of the window at something far removed from the view it afforded. Janet felt the strained muscles of her face relax. For a difficult instant she was not sure whether she meant to laugh or cry. Then both her hands went out to him, while she resolutely assumed the sisterly attitude she knew the situation demanded from her.
"But before I really congratulate you," she smiled, after he had released them, "tell me who it is. Some one I know, of course."
Her mind was already calling the roll of the girls in their set, examining each, dismissing some summarily, pausing over others, but never pausing long.
"No one you know," he laughed. "Never met her myself till the night before last. But—well, you'll like her!"
"Bertie Gildersleeve!" Miss Varick might have been her own maiden aunt, so austere was her manner, so suddenly worldly and disapproving her tone. "Do you mean to say you've taken up with some girl we've never heard of—some girl without family or position?"
"She's got family and position, all right," he reassured her. "She's Mrs. Van Brunt's niece, from Virginia, and she's just come here on a visit. Never saw her in my life till Thursday, but the minute I looked into her eyes I knew it was all over with me."
He was moving around the room now like an exultant boy, his hands in his pockets, his head up, happiness and self-confidence radiating from him.
Janet followed his movements with unseeing eyes, her thoughts busy with the problem he suggested. That he was in earnest seemed impossible. That he could change so suddenly was inexplicable. And that he could come and tell her of the change without a trace of embarrassment or self-consciousness simply could not be happening.
"And you met her Thursday night, proposed to her Friday night—?" she asked, suddenly.
"Exactly; and came to tell you about it Saturday night."
He was obviously proud of the expedition with which the little matter had been concluded.
"And to-morrow," he went on, blithely, "I'm going to bring her here to meet you. May we come to tea? She wants to. I've told her all about you," he added.
"What did you tell her?" she asked.
"Said I'd known you all my life, and that you were the best pal I had."
She dropped her eyes and studied the pattern of a prayer-rug at her feet. For a moment the hope came to her that the episode was a dream—a rather unpleasant dream, she admitted, mentally. To dream of Bertie as the property of another girl was strangely unexhilarating. But the six feet of triumphant manhood before her was not the stuff of which dreams were made. No; this incredible thing was really occurring. Bertie, who three short days ago had been ready to tear the stars from the heavens to make a diadem for her, Bertie was in love with some one else! Had he ever been in love with her? She did not know. Had she—and this was the vital question—had she, despite her coy misgivings, ever been in love with him? She did not know that, either—and now it didn't matter, to Bertie, at least. Under an abrupt jar of the glass in Time's relentless hand, Bertie had suddenly become an affectionate brother with a confidence to make, and she, in the same disturbance, had been transformed into that greatest need in his universe—a Sympathetic Ear.
"You're not half as enthusiastic about it as I expected," he told her, ruefully. "Aren't you glad?"
She accepted her rôle and produced a creditable smile. "I'm delighted," she said. "But it's so—so unexpected. Bring her to-morrow," she added, warmly. "Of course I want to meet her." Then she rose and gave him her hand. "And now good night," she said again. "I needn't tell you how happy I want you to be. Till to-morrow, at five."
"You'll like her," he prophesied, joyfully, lingering at the door. "All I've got to say is, wait till you see her. She bowls folks over. The other fellows are mad about her. Why, Janet, she's the most exquisite thing that ever lived—utterly different from our Northern girls. I didn't know girls came that way. She has bronzy hair with gold lights in it, and great big brown eyes—"
"Bertie, for Heaven's sake go home!" begged Janet Varick, wearily. "This headache of mine—"
He was all contrition. "I'm a beast," he admitted, abjectly; "forgot all about your headache. I'm an awful muff to bore you about our affair like this. But—well, you know, some way," he finished with a rush, "when a fellow feels like this he's simply got to talk about it to any one that will listen."
He left her to digest that, and Janet took her headache to bed. It was not easy to dismiss Bertie and his fiancée from her mind, but she did it. The silent watches of the night, she decided, were not the time for mental work over the problem they presented. Nor was it easier to solve when they arrived the next afternoon, on the stroke of five. Until she saw them together she had dared to hope, subconsciously, that there had been a mistake. Was it a joke?—in extremely bad taste, of course, and not at all like Bertie. Still she rather hoped it might be even that. Acting on the maxim that "All's fair in love and war," possibly Bertie had arranged an object-lesson for her that would galvanize her into the knowledge of what she was losing. If he had conceived such a plan it would be quite like him to persuade some girl cousin or friend to join in the game. But one look at the faces of the couple dispelled that illusion. Here was young love, indeed— the real thing: confident, blissful, exultant. There was no self-consciousness in the manner of the bride-elect, nor any flutter in the presence of this other girl who had known Bertie so long, and who might be expected to be critical. She was sure, quite sure, of herself and of him.
Bertie, who had written and produced two plays at college, intended, of course, to devote his life to the inspiring but uncertain field of play-writing. Fortunately, he had an independent income, so the result of his dramatic experiments would not affect the domestic supply of bread and butter. They could be married at once, and Ethel—that was Her name—who was an excellent musician, would write the incidental music for Bertie's plays. It was all planned. They told Janet about it, both talking at once, interrupting each other, apologizing, and doing it again. Neither listened to Janet, who devoted herself to refilling their teacups.
Ethel, it seemed, had already written one bit of music on the evening of their engagement, when, for some strange reason, she was unable to sleep. At his urging, she rose and played it—a charming little thing, haunting, melodious, with an originality which Miss Varick at least had not expected to find. Bertie had seized Ethel's tea-cake while she was away from the table, and she scrambled good-naturedly with him for its possession when she returned. They compromised, at last, by eating it together, in alternate bites, and with much laughter. Watching them, Janet felt a thousand years old.
Bertie left with his beloved, and tenderly, solicitously, escorted her home. It was quite understood, in the final moments, that Janet was always to be their dearest friend, and was to come to them when she felt tired, and occupy the room which would be ready for her in their home. Later in the evening Bertie reappeared, the sun of his content temporarily obscured by a cloud of enforced separation. Ethel had a dinner engagement for that night—made before she had met him—and as they had been together all day, her aunt had sternly ruled that she must keep it. Miss Varick, it appeared, was happily disengaged, and Bertie, lounging before her open fire, his hands behind his head in excess of comfort, discoursed of the Only One.
"You're quite sure, Bertie," Janet ventured to ask, "that this is the real thing—that it will stand the wear and tear of life? You know marriage is important. You've got to spend your lives together. Are you really congenial? Will you make each other happy? You've known each other so short a time, and you're both so young—"
Bertie nodded, his face very grave. "Don't I know?" he said. "I'm as old as you are! Since I've met her I've broken into a cold perspiration sometimes over the thought that some other girl might have got me before she came. It often happens, you know," he added. Miss Varick favored him with a piercing glance, but it was clear that he was speaking with entire sincerity and with an utter absence of memories which might have checked his artless prattle.
"A man," he continued, oracularly, "flirts and flutters about a bit, and loses his head a few times, perhaps. But all the while he knows in his heart it isn't the real thing, and if any girl he's flirting with takes him when he's off his guard, you know, why it makes him sick!"
"Really?"
He could see that she was interested.
"Ye-s," said Bertie, impressively. "I know one chap that got caught because he was out walking with a girl and saw a sign advertising a flat for seventy-five dollars a month. They had nothing to do, so for a joke they went in and looked at it. It was a dandy flat—beamed ceiling in the living-room, tiled bath-room, view up the river from the dining-room. Jim was so fascinated by it that he asked the girl to marry him. She took him like a shot, and the first thing he knew he was engaged and had the lease of the flat in his pocket. It scared him frightfully at first, for he didn't really care for her and had never dreamed of marrying her. But he got used to her after a while, and they hit it off very well. He told me the last time I met him, though, that the apartment was a fraud," added Bertie, reflectively. "All the nickel came off the plumbing the very first year."
Janet listened in silence to these revelations. She found nothing to say, but that was unimportant, for it was obvious that nothing was expected. This, she reflected, gloomily, was Man's Love!
"Several fellows I know," continued Bertie, dreamily, "are married to girls they proposed to by accident. One of them was a classmate of mine at New Haven. We called him 'Hunks.' because it wasn't anything like his name. Hunks was walking in the country with a girl and she sprained her ankle. She couldn't walk, so he telephoned from a farm-house for an automobile, and then sat down beside her to wait till it came. She was in a good deal of pain, and he was so sorry for her that he asked her to marry him. She accepted him," concluded Bertie. "Forgot the ankle, and took him then and there. She had presence of mind."
Still Janet did not speak, and, still unconscious of her lack of response, Bertie continued his recitation.
"Sometimes you propose because you can't think of anything else to say," he pursued, reflectively, "and sometimes because it would hurt a girl's feelings if you didn't. She thinks she likes you, and she thinks you like her. Or a man's lonesome, and hates hotels and clubs and boarding-houses, so he 'marries for a home,' exactly as much as any woman ever does." He shook his head mournfully. "It's an awful thing," he summed up, "for every one of them, when they do that, misses the biggest thing in life—meeting the Right Girl and getting her."
Janet moved restlessly in her chair. There were several things she could have said, several questions she wished to ask, but any one of them would have broken the spell of the moment and might have hurled into abject embarrassment the young man who now sat beside her, deep in his pet arm-chair, thinking aloud, submerged in the interest of the great question he was discussing. She ventured what she believed would be a fairly safe inquiry.
"When the real girl arrives," she asked, "how does a man know it?"
Bertie regarded her pityingly, as one outside the garden of life.
"There's no mistaking it," he declared, positively. "Every nerve, every drop of blood in one's body, testifies to it. Every instinct of one's heart and soul cries, 'She's here at last!' Jove! but it's great when that happens—simply great! It makes the other little affairs seem like the tuning up of the violins before the symphony begins."
For a long minute he gazed into the fire, seeing there, no doubt, some dream-picture of his future home. Then he drew a deep breath.
"Think of the chaps it comes to too late!" he exclaimed, almost under his breath. "But one mustn't think of that. It's too awful."
She did not speak, for his words had sent her thoughts on a little journey in which he had no part. She hardly heard him, yet, subconsciously, she knew that he was helping her to find an answer to the question in the background of her mind. Her nerves relaxed and she smiled to herself in restored content. Suddenly Bertie roused himself from his brown study, almost with a start, then turned to her with the irresistible boyish smile that revealed the despised dimple in his cheek.
"I'm a chump to sit here, boring you with all this," he apologized. "But, you know, I can say things to you I can't say to any one else."
This was like the old days—the old days of last week. She smiled at him quizzically.
"Why, I can talk to you as if"—Bertie paused for a fitting comparison and found it—"as if you were my sister!" he finished, triumphantly.
She laughed, with genuine amusement, and they sat silent for a moment in the old-time common content in each other's companionship. Yet even as he basked in this, a certain change in the atmosphere attracted Bertie's attention. It was not sudden; indeed, he had been vaguely conscious of it ever since Janet had settled back in her chair and laughed that little laugh that almost held a note of relief. He wondered vaguely why she had laughed that way. Then his eyes, traveling from the driftwood fire to his hostess, rested lightly on her face and clung there, fixed. Was she—no; it couldn't be possible—yet it was. She was almost yawning! Not openly, of course; but unostentatiously, unmistakably, she was struggling with a yawn. He could even see the muscles of her jaw stiffen as she conquered the dreadful thing. Worst of all, her effort was merely instinctive, for her eyes were on the fire and her air was preoccupied, absent. Had she, he wondered, forgotten that he was there? That would be bad enough; but another suspicion, infinitely more harassing, stirred in his mind. He hardly dared put it to himself, but it was there and would not be downed. Was he boring her? He had frequently disappointed her; he had often annoyed her; he had sometimes infuriated her. But never, never, until to-night, had he bored her, and she had often told him that she was sure he never could. Yet now—had he begun to, and why? What had he done? And suddenly he remembered. He had talked to her about another girl!
For a moment he was horror-struck; then he became justly indignant. So this, he reflected bitterly, was Friendship! You come to your best friend; you open your innermost heart to her, in the natural expectation of receiving her understanding sympathy in your happiness, and what happens? Dull-eyed, her thoughts a thousand miles away, she yawns before the fire!
The door of the drawing-room opened, and Kawa, the Varicks' Japanese butler, appeared on the threshold, breathed a name into space, and vanished. But, striding across the floor with buoyant step and radiant countenance, came Mr. Arthur Murray, and already Miss Varick was greeting this gentleman with a countenance as radiant as his own. Gone was her drowsiness, gone her absent-mindedness, her listlessness. There was unabashed, open delight in her greeting. She had always liked Murray, and Bertie had always wondered why. There was no one on earth whom he himself disliked so much, and heretofore Mr. Murray had reciprocated the emotion with almost passionate intensity. But on this strange night, when so many singular things were happening, Murray, having greeted his hostess, came toward Bertie with eyes alight and friendly hand outstretched.
"I congratulate you, old man," he cried, heartily. "I've just heard the news at the club. It's simply great. I can't tell you how delighted I am over your good luck."
He was delighted. There was no possible doubt about that. He wrung Bertie's hand, and that young man, thus reminded of his felicity, wrung his hand cordially in return.
"Thanks," he said, gaily, the warm tide of his happiness again overwhelming him. "Awfully good of you—"
He wanted to go on talking, telling Murray about Ethel, but Murray didn't hear him. He had pushed a chair between Bertie and Miss Varick, had slipped into it, and now, very much at his ease, was giving all his attention to his hostess, who, in her turn, was obviously and wholly absorbed in him. Bertie, neglected, alone, studied them in silence, caught at last a look that flashed between them, felt a moment's pang, and then unselfishly rejoiced.
"By Jove! they've got it, too! Good for Janet!" his thoughts went on. "But I wish," he couldn't help adding, "it hadn't been Murray!"
"You and Horace are going to the Browns' to-morrow night, aren't you?" he heard Murray ask.
Horace's sister admitted that they were.
"May I drop in and go with you?" Murray continued. "At eleven? Thanks. And may I have all the dances?"
Words of protest suddenly burst from Bertie. "Well, I like that!" he began. "Why, Janet, you promised—"
Under the look of mild, almost shocked surprise in the two pairs of eyes turned upon him, the rest of his sentence froze upon his lips.
"Oh!" he said, and grinned self-consciously. "That's so. I must—that is—"
But he need not have felt embarrassed. No one else did. Mr. Murray was explaining to Miss Varick the happy inspiration which only now had come to him at the club, to drop in and see if she and Horace didn't want to run over to Westchester the next morning in his (Murray's) new car, and see the prettiest game of motor-polo any one could ask for. Haskell and Jim Reid were to play. Then followed a technical description of their game, and of Haskell's exhibition of nerve, which made Miss Varick gasp in anticipatory delight.
"I wouldn't miss it for the world," she declared. "If you will excuse me, I'll ask Horace if he's free to-morrow. He's up in his study."
But Bertie had no yearning for a tête-à-tête with Mr. Murray. "I'm off," he said, easily. "Promised I'd call for Ethel and take her home. See you in a few days, Janey."
Miss Varick looked at him as one looks at a pressed rose in a book and wonders when one put it there. Her expression was reminiscent, affectionate, but vague.
"Yes," she said; "and I'll call on Ethel to-morrow. I want to give a dinner for her, you know, on her first free evening. She and I must arrange that."
Her voice was warm and friendly. Bertie had always loved it. He had told her he would rather hear her speak than listen to great singers. Now he had an odd feeling that her voice was coming to him from a distance. She was here, and so was Murray, and he was outside of their circle—far, far outside it. For a moment he experienced the same pang she had felt as she watched him at the tea-table with Ethel—the pang that comes with the passing of something dear, intimate, and familiar that seemed exclusively one's own.
At the door he turned for the farewell nod she had always tossed him. At first he feared he was not to have it to-night, for Murray, as usual, was talking, and she was deeply interested. But as he crossed the threshold and cast a last glance at her she remembered him. It was a dear little nod she threw him—careless, affectionate, such a nod as a mother might give to a small boy who was going out to play.
Well, he was going out to play. He was going back to Ethel, and his heart sang at the thought. Nevertheless, in the outer hall he wondered if she would nod at Arthur Murray that way; and he knew she wouldn't. She would go with Murray to the door. Then, as he went slowly down the steps, he pondered the situation and solved its problem in a flash of insight. He understood, at last, both her feelings and his own.
"It came so suddenly," he told himself, sedately, "that I guess we didn't know just how to take it. We didn't know where we were at."
He looked up at the stars, and their beauty filled him with the triumphant joy of a discoverer. Surely they had never looked like that before!
"Love makes the whole world seem different," he mused. "Of course Ethel and Janey and Murray and I couldn't wake up in a moment to the Big Thing in life without a sort of readjustment of all the little things."
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1947, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 76 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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