第32章

"God," he said, "you--you take my breath away.You make my brain whirl.Why didn't you come out of your garden a year ago?"He was acting, she thought, and she laughed."My arm, I think," she said.

"No, mine.It's got to be mine.What's the good of beating about the bush?" He spoke with a queer hoarseness, and his hand shook.

She laughed again.He was trying his parlor tricks, as Hosack had called them one night at the Crystal Room, watching him greet a woman with both hands.What a joke to see what he would do if she pretended to be carried away.He might as well be made to pay for keeping her up."Oh, Gilbert," she said, "what are you saying!" Her shyness and fright were admirable.

They added fuel to his fire."What I've been waiting to say for years and never thought I should.I love you.You've just got me."How often had he said those very words to other women! He did it surpassingly well.She continued to act."Oh, Gilbert," she said in a low voice, "you mustn't.There's Alice." Two could play at his pet game.

"Yes, there is Alice.But what does that matter? I don't care, and you don't.Your motto is not to care.You're always saying so.I'm no more married to Alice than you are to Gray.They're accidents, both of them.I love you, I tell you." And he ran his hand up to her shoulder and bore down upon her.Where were his manners and polish and assurance? It was amazing to see the change in the man.

But she dodged away and took up a stand behind the piano and laughed at him."You're an artist, Gilbert," she said."It's all very well for you to practice on women of your own age, but I'm an unsophisticated girl.You might turn my head, you know."Her sarcasm threw him up short.She was mocking.He was profoundly hurt."But you've chosen me.You've picked me out.You've used me to take you to places night after night! Don't fool with me, Joan.I'm in dead earnest."And she saw with astonishment that he was.His face was white, and he stood in a curious attitude of supplication, with his hands out.

She was amazed, and for a moment thrilled.Gilbert Palgrave, the woman's man, in love with her.Think of it!

"But Gilbert," she said, "there's Alice.She's my friend." That seemed to matter more than the fact that she was his wife.

"That hasn't mattered to you all along.Why drag it in now? Night after night you've danced with me; I've been at your beck and call;you used me to rescue you from Gray that time.What are you? What are you made of? Unsophisticated! You!" He wasn't angry.He was fumbling at reasons in order to try and get at her point of view.

"You know well enough that a man doesn't put himself out to that extent for nothing.What becomes of give and take? Do you conceive that you are going to sail through life taking everything and giving nothing?"Martin had asked her this, and Alice, and now here was Gilbert Palgrave putting it to her as though it were an indictment! "But I'm a kid," she cried out."What do you all mean? Can't I be allowed to have any fun without paying for it? I'm only just out of the shell.

I've only been living for a few weeks.Can't you see that I'm a kid?

I have the right to take all I can get for nothing,--the right of youth.What do you mean--all of you?"She came out from behind the piano and stood in front of him, as erect as a silver birch, and as slim and young.There was a great indignation all about her.

His eager hands went out, and fell.He was not a brute.It would be cowardly to touch this amazing child.She was armed with fearlessness and virginity--and he had mistaken these things for callousness.

"I don't know what to say," he said."You stagger me.How long are you going to hide behind this youthfulness? When are you going to be old enough to be honest? Men have patience only up to a point.At any rate, you didn't claim youth when Gray asked you to marry him--though you may have done so afterward.Did you?"She kept silent.But her eyes ran over him with contempt.According to her, she had given him no right to put such questions.

He ignored it.It was undeserved.It was she who deserved contempt, not he.And he threw it back at her in a strange incoherent outburst in which, all the same, there was a vibrating note of gladness and relief.And all the while, unmoved by the passion into which he broke, she stood watching with a curious gravity his no longer immobile face.She was thinking about Martin.She was redeveloping Martin's expression when she had opened the door of her bedroom the night of her marriage and let him out.What about her creed, then?

Was she hiding behind youthfulness? Were there, after all, certain things that must be paid for? Was she already old enough to be what Alice and this man called honest? Was every man made of the stuff that only gave for what he hoped to get in return?

His words trailed off.He was wasting them, he saw.She was looking through his head.But he rejoiced as to one thing like a potter who opens the door of his oven and finds his masterpiece unbroken.And silence fell upon them, interrupted only by the intermittent humming of passing cars.

Finally Palgrave took the cigarette box out of Joan's hand and put it down on a little table and stood looking more of a man than might have been expected.

"I've always hoped that one day I should meet you--just you," he said quietly; "and when I did, I knew that it would be to love.

Well, I've told you.Do what you can for me until you decide that you're grown up.I'll wait."And he turned and went away, and presently she heard a door shut and echo, and slow footsteps in the street below.

Where was Martin?