A Young Man in a Hurry, and Other Short Stories Part 47

"Telepathy?" she repeated, faintly.

"Telepathy! Thought persuasion! It's incredible! It's--it's a--it was a dreadful thing to do. I don't know what to say."

"Is it necessary for you to say anything to--me?"

"Can you ever pardon me?"

"I don't think I understand," she said, slowly. "Are you asking pardon for your rudeness in speaking to me?"

"No," he almost groaned; "I'll do that later. There is something much worse--"

Her cool self-possession unnerved him. Composure is sometimes the culmination of fright; but he did not know that, because he did not know the subtler s.e.x. His fluency left him; all he could repeat was, "I'm sorry I'm speaking to you--but there's something much worse."

"I cannot imagine anything worse," she said.

"Won't you grant me a moment to explain?" he urged.

"How can I?" she replied, calmly. "How can a woman permit a man to speak without shadow of excuse? You know perfectly well what convention requires."

Hot, uncomfortable, he looked at her so appealingly that her eyes softened a little.

"I don't suppose you mean to be impertinent to me," she said, coldly.

He said that he didn't with so much fervor that something perilously close to a smile touched her lips. He told her who he was, and the information appeared to surprise her, so it is safe to a.s.sume she knew it already. He pleaded in extenuation that they had been neighbors for a year; but she had not, apparently, been aware of this either; and the snub completed his discomfiture.

"I--I was so anxious to know you," he said, miserably. "That was the beginning--"

"It is a perfectly horrid thing to say," she said, indignantly. "Do you suppose, because you are a public character, you are privileged to speak to anybody?"

He attempted to say he didn't, but she went on: "Of course that is not a palliation of your offence. It is a dreadful condition of affairs if a woman cannot go out alone--"

"Please don't say that!" he cried.

"I must. It is a terrible comment on modern social conditions," she repeated, shaking her pretty head. "A woman who permits it--especially a woman who is obliged to support herself--for if I were not poor I should be driving here in my brougham, and you know it!--oh, it is a hideously common thing for a girl to do!" Opening her book, she appeared to be deeply interested in it. But the book was upside down.

Glancing at him a moment later, she was apparently surprised to find him still standing beside her. However, he had noted two things in that moment of respite: she held the book upside down, and on the t.i.tle-page was written a signature that he knew--"Marlitt."

"Under the circ.u.mstances," she said, coldly, "do you think it decent to continue this conversation?"

"Yes, I do," he said. "I'm a decent sort of fellow, or you would have divined the contrary long ago; and there is a humiliating explanation that I owe you."

"You owe me every explanation," she said, "but I am generous enough to spare you the humiliation."

"I know what you mean," he admitted. "I hypnotized you into coming here, and you are aware of it."

Pink to the ears with resentment and confusion, she sat up very straight and stared at him. From a pretty girl defiant, she became an angry beauty. And he quailed.

"Did you imagine that you hypnotized me?" she asked, incredulously.

"What was it, then?" he muttered. "You did everything I wished for--"

"What did you wish for?"

"I--I thought you needed the sun, and as soon as I said that you ought to go out, you--you put on that big, black hat. And then I wished I knew you--I wished you would come here to the wistaria arbor, and--you came."

"In other words," she said, disdainfully, "you deliberately planned to control my mind and induce me to meet you in a clandestine and horrid manner."

"I never looked at it in that way. I only knew I admired you a lot, and--and you were tremendously charming--more so than my sketch--"

"_What_ sketch?"

"I--you see, I made a little sketch," he admitted--"a little picture of you--"

Her silence scared him.

"Do you mind?" he ventured.

"Of course you will send that portrait to me at once!" she said.

"Oh yes, of course I will; I had meant to send it anyway--"

"That," she observed, "would have been the very height of impertinence."

Opening her book again, she indulged him with a view of the most exquisite profile he had ever dreamed of.

She despised him; there seemed to be no doubt about that. He despised himself; his offence, stripped by her of all extenuation, appeared to him in its own naked hideousness; and it appalled him.

"As a matter of fact," he said, "there's nothing criminal in me. I never imagined that a man could appear to such disadvantage as I appear. I'll go. There's no use in hoping for pardon. I'll go."

Studying her book, she said, without raising her eyes, "I am offended--deeply hurt--but--"

He waited anxiously.

"But I am sorry to say that I am not as deeply offended as I ought to be."

"That is very, very kind of you," he said, warmly.

"It is very depraved of me," she retorted, turning a page.

After a silence, he said, "Then I suppose I must go."

It is possible she did not hear him; she seemed engrossed, bending a little closer over the book on her knee, for the shadows of blossom and foliage above had crept across the printed page.

All the silence was in tremulous vibration with the hum of bees; the perfume of the flowers grew sweeter as the sun sank towards the west, flinging long, blue shadows over the gra.s.s and asphalt.

A gray squirrel came hopping along, tail twitching, and deliberately climbed up the seat where she was sitting, squatting beside her, paws drooping in dumb appeal.

"You dear little thing!" said the girl, impulsively. "I wish I had a bonbon for you! Have you anything in the world to give this half-starved squirrel, Mr. Tennant?"