Part 18 (1/2)

Drew's frown relaxed. ”Then what's the trouble?” he suggested.

Her eyebrows arched again. ”What's the trouble?” she queried. ”Why, I happen to love him. That's all.”

She took her hand away from Drew and began to smooth her skirt once more.

”Yes,” she repeated slowly, ”as long ago as last winter I made up my mind that I didn't want to marry him--but I didn't make up my courage until Spring. My courage, I think, is just about six months slower than my mind. And then, too, my 'love-margin' wasn't quite used up, I suppose. A woman usually has a 'love-margin,' you know, and, besides, there's always so much more impetus in a woman's love. Even though she's hurt, even though she's heartbroken, even though, worst of all, she's a tiny bit bored, all her little, natural love courtesies go on just the same of their own momentum, for a day or a week, or a month, or half a lifetime, till the love-flame kindles again--or else goes out altogether. Love has to be like that. But if I were a man, Drew, I'd be awfully careful that that love-margin didn't ever get utterly exhausted.

Aleck, though, doesn't understand about such things. I smoothed his headaches just as well, and listened to his music just as well, so he s.h.i.+ftlessly took it for granted that I loved him just as well. What nonsense! 'Love?'” Her voice rose almost shrilly. ”'Love?' Bah! What's love, anyway, but a wicked sort of hypnotism in the way that a mouth slants, or a cheek curves, or a lock of hair colors? Listen to me. If Aleck Reese were a woman and I were a man, I certainly wouldn't choose his type for a sweetheart--irritable, undomestic, wild for excitement.

How's that for a test? And if Aleck Reese and I were both women, I certainly shouldn't want him for my friend. Oughtn't that to decide it?

Not a vital taste in common, not a vital interest, not a vital ideal!”

She began to laugh hysterically. ”And I can't sleep at night for remembering the droll little way that his hair curls over his forehead, or the hurt, surprised look in his eyes when he ever really did get sorry about anything. My G.o.d! Drew, look at me!” she cried, and rolled up her sleeves to her elbow. The flesh was gone from her as though a fever had wasted her.

The muscles in Drew's throat began to twitch unpleasantly. ”Was Aleck Reese mean to you?” he persisted doggedly.

A little faint, defiant smile flickered across her lips. ”Never mind, Drew,” she said, ”whether Aleck Reese was mean to me or not. It really doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter at all just exactly what a man does or doesn't do to a woman as long as, by one route or another, before her wedding day, he brings her to the place where she can honestly say in her heart, 'This man that I want is not the kind of man that I want.' Honor, loyalty, strength, gentleness--why, Drew, the man I marry has _got_ to be the kind of man I want.

”I've tried to be fair to Aleck,” she mused almost tenderly. ”I've tried to remember always that men are different from women, and that Aleck perhaps is different from most men. I've tried to remember always that he is a musician--a real, real musician with all the ghastly, agonizing extremes of temperament. I've tried to remember always that he didn't grow up here with us in our little town with all our fierce, little-town standards, but that he was educated abroad, that his whole moral, mental, and social ideals are different, that the admiration and adulation of--new--women is like the breath of life to him--that he simply couldn't live without it any more than I could live without the love of animals, or the friends.h.i.+p of children, or the wonderfulness of outdoors, all of which bore _him_ to distraction.

”Oh, I've reasoned it all out, night after night after night, fought it out, _torn_ it out, that he probably really and truly did love me quite a good deal--in his own way--when there wasn't anything else to do. But how can it possibly content a woman to have a man love her as well as _he_ knows how--if it isn't as well as _she_ knows how? We won't talk about--Aleck Reese's morals,” she finished abruptly. ”Fickleness, selfishness, neglect, even infidelity itself, are such purely minor, incidental data of the one big, incurably rotten and distasteful fact that--such and such a man is _stupid in the affections_.”

With growing weakness she sank back in her chair and closed her eyes.

For an anxious moment Drew sat and watched her. ”Is that all?” he asked at last.

She opened her eyes in surprise. ”Why, yes,” she said, ”that's all--that is, it's all if you understand. I'm not complaining because Aleck Reese didn't love me, but because, loving me, he wasn't _intelligent_ enough to be true to me. You do understand, don't you? You understand that it wasn't because he didn't pay his love bills, but because he didn't know enough to pay them. He took my loyalty without paying for it with his; he took my devotion, my tenderness, my patience, without ever, ever making any adequate return. Any girl ought to be able to tell in six months whether her lover is using her affection rightly, whether he is taking her affection and investing it with his toward their mutual happiness and home. Aleck invested nothing. He just took all my love that he could grab and squandered it on himself--always and forever on himself. A girl, I say, ought to be able to tell in six months. But I am very stupid. It has taken me three years.”

”Well, what do you want _me_ to do?” Drew asked a bit quizzically.

”I want you to advise me,” she said.

”Advise you--_what_?” persisted Drew.

The first real flicker of comedy flamed in the girl's face. Her white cheeks pinked and dimpled. ”Why, advise me to--marry _you_!” she announced. ”WELL, WHY NOT?” She fairly hurled the three-word bridge across the sudden, awful chasm of silence that yawned before her.

Drew's addled mind caught the phrase dully and turned it over and over without attempting to cross on it. ”Well, why not? Well, why not?” he kept repeating. His discomfiture filled the girl with hysterical delight, and she came and perched herself opposite him on the farther end of his desk and smiled at him.

”It seems to me perfectly simple,” she argued. ”Without any doubt or question you certainly are the kind of man whom I should like to marry.

You are true and loyal and generous and rugged about things. And you like the things that I like. And I like the people that you like. And, most of anything in the world, you are _clever in the affections_. You are heart-wise as well as head-wise. Why, even in the very littlest, silliest thing that could possibly matter, you wouldn't--for instance--remember George Was.h.i.+ngton's birthday and forget mine. And you wouldn't go away on a lark and leave me if I was sick, any more than you'd blow out the gas. And you wouldn't--hurt me about--other women--any more than you'd eat with your knife.” Impulsively she reached over and patted his hand with the tips of her fingers. ”As far as I can see,” she teased, ”there's absolutely no fault in you that matters to me except that I don't happen to love you.”

Quick as her laugh the tears came scalding back to her eyes.

”Why, Drew,” she hurried on desperately, ”people seem to think it's a dreadful thing to marry a man whom you don't love; but n.o.body questions your marrying _any_ kind of a man if you do love him. As far as I can make out, then, it's the love that matters, not the man. Then why not love the right man?” She began to smile again. ”So here and now, sir, I deliberately choose to love _you_.”

But Drew's fingers did not even tighten over hers.

”I want to be a happy woman,” she pleaded. ”Why, I'm only twenty-two. I can't let my life be ruined now. There's _got_ to be some way out. And I'm going to find that way out if I have to crawl on my hands and knees for a hundred years. I'm luckier than some girls. I've got such a s.h.i.+ning light to aim for.”

Almost roughly Drew pulled his hand away, the color surging angrily into his cheeks. ”I'm no s.h.i.+ning light,” he protested hotly, ”and you shall never, never come crawling on your hands and knees to me.”

”Yes, I shall,” whispered the girl. ”I shall come creeping very humbly, if you want me. And you do want me, don't you? Oh, please advise me. Oh, please play you are my Father or my Big Brother and advise me to--marry _you_.”

Drew laughed in spite of himself. ”Play I was your Father or your Big Brother?” Mimicry was his one talent. ”Play I was your Father or your Big Brother and advise you to marry me?”