Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/201

Rh night, but she was at home and would see him.

It seemed an endlessly long time before she appeared; he paced the room, miserably anxious to have the business over with and be gone. Yet when she finally entered, the serene gravity in her eyes reassured him; he found that he could speak naturally, even lightly. "You got your change at last?" he said. "It was correct?"

"To the last penny; it was very good of you."

He had not expected that she would help him any further. At the greater cross-roads of life it must always be for the man to lead the way, and for the woman to follow—if she will.

"You remember that night at 'The Cedars, he began. "There was a discussion as to a woman's right to know that she is loved, to be told so from the man's own mouth, and no matter what the other circumstances of the case might be. You remember?"

"Yes," said Miss Hasbrouck.

"Whether or not he ought to speak—that was the question. That he may was one answer; yours was that he must."

"Yes," said Miss Hasbrouck again.

"I misinterpreted your meaning at the time, but then I was trying to solve the problem by beginning at the wrong end. When a man loves—" he hesitated and dropped his eyes. Then he went on determinedly:

"It was quite true, you know—about Kitty Hunter, and Mrs. Jamison, and—and the others, you among them. But the thing itself—it had never struck me that I ought to be ashamed of what I was trying to accomplish. It has always been considered permissible for a woman to make a good match, by hook or by crook; why not for a man?

"Of course it was my mistake—to think that it was a decenter thing to be perfectly frank and aboveboard. That was simply foolish; I can see now how it spoiled all my—my chances.

"Foolish, yes, and something more, something infinitely more. That part of my lesson began the night when we sat together on the terrace of 'The Cedars'—you and I and the silence.

"There was nothing left for me but to go away on the midnight train; I couldn't have met you face to face in the open day. Yet do you know I was more sore than sorry over what had happened. Somehow it seemed that I had been badly treated. Had you not refused to believe in me?

"The mere getting to work was nothing. I was tired to death of playing gentleman pensioner, and I wanted to prove to you and to Mr. Garrabrant that your estimate of me had been too hasty. At least that's the way I felt in starting off; later on I began to understand what the grind might come to mean in ten, twenty, forty years. Once in a while I would stop and wonder if anything were worth the while.

"Then came the day when you stopped at my window and bought a ticket to Belleair—you haven't forgotten it?"

Miss Hasbrouck was looking steadily into a far corner of the room. She did not speak or move.

"It was our first meeting since that night," continued Jarvis, "and it hit me hard. I even let you go away without your change; I should have been discharged for that if an inspector had happened to be around.

"No wonder that a man doesn't understand women; it takes all his time and energy to find out the truth about himself. So I hung back and tried to argue it out with myself, and failed miserably time and again, as those broken engagements will testify. Now I knew myself and what I had done, and it seemed impossible that I should ever see or speak to you again.

"It was then that I thanked God that there was work in the world for a man to do. Work! It was the only reparation that I could offer you. The duller and meaner it was, the more closely I hugged it to myself. To work, and for your sake! That you shouldn't know anything about it was included in the debt that I was trying to pay off. It seemed natural and proper enough—at the first.

"At the first, I say, for afterwards I came to see that that was only part of the price. There was something more that I owed you, and that I must pay. Must, you understand.

"That seemed simple, too. I could love you, and I would—in silence and apart. It could do you no manner of