Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/130

 cerns me, too. Do you think that after these years of waiting I am going to permit myself to be cast aside by you like a worn-out mare in a stable of blooded stock? Think it over carefully, Jessica—do you think I am the type of man who would permit it?”

She had no answer to this, but there was the pallor of weariness in her face as she sank down into a soft chair on the opposite side of the room from him.

“I have a way of getting what I go after,” he said after a pause, “and nobody knows that better than you—so you might just as well be good.”

“Just what do you mean?” she inquired, flaring at him angrily. “Am I something that a man can go after—something to be had simply because he has made up his mind that he wants her?”

“Come, come,” he smiled, and his face was strangely whimsical when he smiled that way, in strange contrast to the sinister appearance of the man when his features were in repose. “Don’t be theatrical about it—there is no need for that mask between us, my dear. You have promised to marry me—and when women promise to marry me—” he smiled again—“I always make them stick to their promise. I suppose I’m queer that way, but”⸺he shrugged his shoulders⸺“I can’t help it. Life is very peculiar, and we must seize our moments of happiness on the fly!”

This was so close to her own thoughts that she could hardly help gasping. She had rather prided herself on that bit of philosophy, but if philosophy was so easy that others could—without effort—think the same things, why it was scarcely worth while. Somebody has said that a great philosopher is one who says the things you have always thought but have never formulated into so many words. If what he writes causes