The Streets of Ascalon Part 96

"Has he become a Russian dancer, Rix?"

"No, bless his heart! He's fallen head over ears in love and is engaged and is going to marry!"

"Who?"

"Our stenographer!"

"Rix!"

"Certainly.... She's pretty and sweet and good and _most_ worthy; and she's as crazy about Dankmere as he is about her.... Really, Strelsa, she's a charming young girl, and she'll make as pretty a countess as any of the Dankmeres have married in many a generation."

Strelsa's lip curled: "I don't doubt that. They were always a horrid c.o.c.k-fighting, prize-fighting, dissolute lot, weren't they?"

"Something like that. But the present Dankmere is a good sort--really he is, Strelsa. And as for Jessie Vining, she's sweet. You'll be nice to them, won't you?"

She said: "I'd be nice to them anyway. But now that you ask me to I'll be whatever you wish."

"You _are_ a corker," he said almost tenderly; but with a slight smile she kept her hands out of his reach.

"We mustn't degenerate into sentimentalism just because we're glad to see each other," she said so calmly that he did not notice the tremor in her voice. "And by the way, how is Mr. Westguard?"

They both laughed.

"Speaking of sentiment," said Quarren, "Karl now exudes it daily. He and Bleecker De Groot and Mrs. Caldera--to Lester's rage--have started a weekly paper called _Brotherhood_, consisting of pabulum for the h.o.r.n.y-handed.

"I couldn't do anything with Karl. Just look at him! He's really a good story-teller if he chooses. He could write jolly-good novels if he would. But the spectacle of De Groot weeping over a Bowery audience has finished him; and he's hard at work on a volume called 'The World's Woe,' and means to publish it himself because no publisher will take it."

"Poor Karl," she said, smiling.

"No," said Quarren, "that's the worst of it. His aunt has settled a million on him.... I tell you, Strelsa, the rich convert has less honour among the poor than the dingiest little 'dip' among the gorgeous corsairs of Wall Street.

"I don't know how it happens, but Christ was never yet successfully preached from Fifth Avenue, and the millionaire whose heart bleeds for the poor needs a sterner surgeon than a complacent conscience to really stop the hemorrhage."

"Rich men do good, Rix," she said thoughtfully.

"But not by teaching or practising the thrift of celestial insurance--not by admonition to orthodoxy and exhortation to wors.h.i.+p a Creator who sees to it that no two people are created equal. There is only one thing the rich can give to the poor for Christ's sake; and even that will always be taken with suspicion and distrust. No; there are only two ways to live: one is the life of self-discipline; the other is to actually imitate the militant Son of Man whose faith we pretend to profess--but whose life-history we merely parody, turning His crusade into a grotesque carnival. I know of no third course consistent."

"To lead an upright life within bounds where your lines have fallen, or to strip and go forth militant," she mused. "There is no third course, as you say.... Do you know, Rix, that I have become a wonderfully happy sort of person?"

"So have I," he said, laughingly.

"It's just because we have something to do, isn't it?"

"That--and the leisure which the idle never have. It seems like a paradox, doesn't it?--to say that the idle never have any time to themselves."

"I know what you mean. I expect to work rather hard the rest of my life," she said seriously, "and yet I can foresee lots and lots of most delicious leisure awaiting me."

"Do you foresee anything else, pretty prophetess?"

"What else do you mean?"

"Well, for example, you will be alone here all winter."

"Do you mean loneliness?" she asked, smiling. "I don't expect to suffer from that. Molly will be here all winter and--you will write to me--"

she turned to him--"won't you, Rix?"

"Certainly. Besides I'm coming up to see you every week."

"Every week!" she repeated, taken a little aback but smiling her sweet, confused smile. "Do you realise what you are so gaily engaging to do?"

"Perfectly. I'm going to build up here."

"What!"

"Of course."

"A--a house?"

He looked at her, hesitated, then looking away:

"Either a house or--an addition."

"An _addition_?"

"If you'll let me, Strelsa--some day."

She understood him then. The painful colour stole into her cheeks, faintly burning, and she closed her eyes for a moment to endure it, sitting silent, motionless, her little sun-tanned hands tightly clasped on her knees.

Then, unclosing her eyes she looked at him, delicate lips tightening.

"I thought our relations were to remain on a higher plane," she said steadily.

"Our relations are to remain what you desire them to be, dear."

"I desire them to be what they are--_always_."

"Then that is my wish also," he said with a smile so genuine and gay that, a little confused by his acquiescence, her own response was slow.

But presently her smile dawned, a little tremulous and uncertain, and her gray eyes remained wistful though the lips curled deliciously.

"I would do anything in the world for you, Rix, except--that," she said in a low voice.

"I know you would, you dear girl."

"Don't you really believe it?"

"Of course I do!"

"But--I _can't_ do that--_ever_. It would--would spoil you for me....