Ladies Must Live Part 20

They were standing in front of a stocking shop in which on a row of composition legs which might have made a chorus envious, "new ideas in hosiery" were romantically displayed, when Riatt decided to tell her of his approaching departure. He chose the street, because he was well aware that she would not approve of his plan, and he wished to avoid a repet.i.tion of last evening's scene.

"I shall have to go away the day after to-morrow," he said, and glanced quickly down on her to see how she would take it.

She was studying the stockings, and she drew away with her head at a critical angle.

"It's a queer thing," she said, "that certain stripes do make the ankle look large. Theoretically they ought to make it look slim, but you take my word for it, Max, they don't."

"Nothing could make your ankles look anything but slim, Christine," he replied politely.

"No, my ankles are rather good, aren't they?" she replied, and then as if she had now disposed of the more serious topic, she added: "And so you are going home? Well, you mayn't believe it, but I shall really miss you a great deal. Oh, look at these jade flowers! They're really good."

Riatt looked at the pale lilac and pink blossoms starting from their icy green leaves, but he hardly saw them. He was disgusted at the discovery of an unexpected perversity in his nature. He found himself hardly pleased at the absence of protest with which his announcement was greeted. All her attention was absorbed by the jade.

"Wouldn't it look well on our drawing-room mantel-piece?" she said.

"I'll give it to you as a wedding present," he answered. "That is, if you think Hickson would like it."

"I don't think he'll like anything you ever give me. He did not even like my ring. He thinks the stone too large. By the way, I never properly thanked you for the ring. It has been most splendidly persuasive. Even Nancy grew pale when she saw the proof of your sincerity."

"Will it be sufficient even in the face of my continued absence?" he asked, for it occurred to him that perhaps she had not understood that he meant to remain in the West indefinitely.

"Oh, I think so," she answered, pleasantly. "You might write to me now and then, and I'll show just a suitable paragraph here and there to an intimate friend."

A new idea suddenly occurred to him. Had she any motive for desiring his absence? Had some unexpected possibility cropped up? Did she want to get rid of him? Not, he added, that he minded if she did, but it would be rather interesting to know.

"I'm going a little earlier than I expected," he went on, "because the Lanes are going, and I hate to make that long journey alone."

She nodded understandingly. "It will be much nicer for you to have them."

He looked at her coldly. It seemed to him he had never known a more callous nature. And to think that the evening before she had actually shed tears, simply because he took another girl to lunch! It caught his attention, he said to himself, just as a study in human nature.

He did not see her the next day until evening. They were both to dine at Nancy's--(thus had the proposed dinner with Mrs. Almar deteriorated) and go afterward to the opera. Nancy of course would not have dreamed of crowding three women into her box, so the party consisted of herself and Christine, Riatt, Roland Almar--a pale, eager, little man, trying to placate the world with smiles, and once again Linburne, whose handsome dark head, and curved mouth, half cynical, half sensuous, began to weary Riatt inexpressibly.

After dinner he found that he and Mrs. Almar were to go in her tiny coupe, and the four others in Linburne's large car.

"And so," she observed as soon as they started, "the mouse preferred the trap after all?" And he could feel that she was laughing at him in the shadow.

"But feels none the less grateful for the kind intention to rescue him."

"Oh, I don't care much for the grat.i.tude of a man in love with another woman."

"You judge me to be very much in love?"

This general conviction on the part of the ladies of his acquaintance was growing monotonous. Nancy continued:

"But come back in two years, and we'll talk of grat.i.tude then. In the meantime let us stick to the impersonal. What do you think of Linburne?"

"I've had many opportunities of judging. I've been nowhere for two days without meeting him."

Mrs. Almar laughed with meaning.

"I wonder why that should be," she said.

"What do you mean?" Riatt asked, but at that moment they drew up before the Thirty-ninth Street entrance, and the doorman, opening the motor's door, shouted "Ten--Forty-five"--a cheerful lie he has been telling four times a week for many years.

In the opera box, Riatt at once seated himself behind Christine. There is no place like the opera for public devotion. Christine was resplendent in black and gold with a huge black and gold fan that made the fans of the temple dancers--the opera was "Ada"--look commonplace and ineffective.

Behind it she now murmured to Max:

"And what poisonous thing did dear Nancy tell you coming down?"

"Nothing--except what everyone has been telling me for the last few days--that I seemed very much in love."

"And that annoyed you, I suppose."

"On the contrary. I was delighted to find I was such a good actor."

"People who pretend to be asleep sometimes end by actually doing it.

Pretending is rather dangerous sometimes."

"Yes, but you see I shan't have to pretend after to-morrow."

"Are you all packed and ready?"

"Mentally I am."

In the _entr'acte_ which followed quickly after their entrance, Christine dismissed him very politely. "There," she said, "you don't have to stay on duty all the time. You can go and stretch your legs, if you want."

He rose at once, and as he did so, Linburne slipped into his place.

Riatt had caught sight of Laura Ussher across the house, and knew his duty demanded that he should go and say a word to his exuberant cousin who, he supposed, regarded herself as the artificer of his happiness.

"Oh, my dear Max," she began, hastily bundling out an old friend who had been reminiscing about the days of the de Rezskes, and waving Riatt into place, "every one is so delighted at the engagement, and thinks you both so fortunate. How happy she is, Max! She looks like a different person."

"I thought she looked rather tired this evening," answered Riatt, who always found himself perverse in face of Laura's enthusiasm.

Mrs. Ussher raised her opera gla.s.s and studied Christine's profile, bent slightly toward Linburne, who was talking with the immobility of feature which many people use when saying things in public which they don't wish overheard. "Oh, well, she doesn't look as brilliant as she did when _you_ were with her. But isn't that natural? I wonder why Nancy asked Lee Linburne and where is that silly little wife of his. Oh, don't go, Max.

It's only the St. Anna attache; we met him on the coast last summer."

But Riatt insisted on making way for the South American diplomat, who was standing courteously in the back of the box.

He wandered out into the corridors, not enough interested in any of his recent acquaintances to go and speak to them. Two men coming up behind him were talking; he could not help hearing their dialogue:

"Who's this fellow she's engaged to?"

"No one knows--a Western chap with a lot of money."

"Suppose she cares anything about him?"