第32章

With sudden soberness and sweetness, ``But, seriously, David, I'm proud of your courage in taking a girl for herself regardless of her surroundings.So few men would be willing to face the ridicule and the criticism, and all the social difficulties.''

She nodded encouragingly.``Go in and win! You can count on my friendship--for I'm in love with her myself.''

She left him standing dazedly, looking up and down the street as if it were some strange and pine-beset highway in a foreign land.

After taking a few steps she returned to the gates and called him: ``I forgot to ask do you want me to regard what you've told me as confidential? I was thinking of telling Martha and Hugo, and it occurred to me that you might not like it.''

``Please don't say anything about it,'' said he with panicky eagerness.``You see--nothing's settled yet.''

``Oh, she'll accept you.''

``But I haven't even asked her,'' pleaded Hull.

``Oh--all right--as you please.''

When she was safely within doors she dropped to a chair and burst out laughing.It was part of Jane's passion for the sense of triumph over the male sex to felt that she had made a ``perfect jumping jack of a fool'' of David Hull.``And I rather think,''

said she to herself, ``that he'll soon be back where he belongs.'' This with a glance at the tall heels of the slippers on the good-looking feet she was thrusting out for her own inspection.``How absurd for him to imagine he could do anything unconventional.Is there any coward anywhere so cowardly as an American conventional man? No wonder I hate to think of marrying one of them.But--I suppose I'll have to do it some day.What's a woman to do? She's GOT to marry.''

So pleased with herself was she that she behaved with unusual forbearance toward Martha whose conduct of late had been most trying.Not Martha's sometimes peevish, sometimes plaintive criticisms of her; these she did not mind.But Martha's way of ordering her own life.Jane, moving about in the world with a good mind eager to improve, had got a horror of a woman's going to pieces--and that was what Martha was doing.

``I'm losing my looks rapidly,'' was her constant complaint.As she had just passed thirty there was, in Jane's opinion, not the smallest excuse for this.The remedy, the preventive, was obvious--diet and exercise.But Martha, being lazy and self-indulgent and not imaginative enough to foresee to what a pass a few years more of lounging and stuffing would bring her, regarded exercise as unladylike and dieting as unhealthful.She would not weaken her system by taking less than was demanded by ``nature's infallible guide, the healthy appetite.'' She would not give up the venerable and aristocratic tradition that a lady should ever be reposeful.

``Another year or so,'' warned Jane, ``and you'll be as steatopygous as the bride of a Hottentot chief.''

``What does steat--that word mean?'' said Martha suspiciously.

``Look in the dictionary,'' said Jane.``Its synonyms aren't used by refined people.''

``I knew it was something insulting,'' said Martha with an injured sniff.

The only concessions Martha would make to the latter-day craze of women for youthfulness were buying a foolish chin-strap of a beauty quack and consulting him as to whether, if her hair continued to gray, she would better take to peroxide or to henna.

Jane had come down that day with a severe lecture on fat and wrinkles laid out in her mind for energetic delivery to the fast-seeding Martha.She put off the lecture and allowed the time to be used by Martha in telling Jane what were her (Jane's)strongest and less strong--not weaker but less strong, points of physical charm.

It was cool and beautiful in the shade of the big gardens behind the old Galland house.Jane, listening to Martha's honest and just compliments and to the faint murmurs of the city's dusty, sweaty toil, had a delicious sense of the superiority of her lot--a feeling that somehow there must be something in the theory of rightfully superior and inferior classes--that in taking what she had not earned she was not robbing those who had earned it, as her reason so often asserted, but was being supported by the toil of others for high purposes of aesthetic beauty.Anyhow, why heat one's self wrestling with these problems?

When she was sure that Victor Dorn must have returned she called him on the telephone.``Can't you come out to see me to-night?''

said she.``I've something important--something YOU'LL think important-- to consult you about.'' She felt a refusal forming at the other end of the wire and hastened to add: ``You must know I'd not ask this if I weren't certain you would be glad you came.''

``Why not drop in here when you're down town?'' suggested Victor.

She wondered why she did not hang up the receiver and forget him.

But she did not.She murmured, ``In due time I'll punish you for this, sir,'' and said to him: ``There are reasons why it's impossible for me to go there just now.And you know I can't meet you in a saloon or on a street corner.''

``I'm not so sure of that,'' laughed he.``Let me see.I'm very busy.But I could come for half an hour this afternoon.''

She had planned an evening session, being well aware of the favorable qualities of air and light after the matter-of-fact sun has withdrawn his last rays.But she promptly decided to accept what offered.``At three?''

``At four,'' replied he.

``You haven't forgotten those books?''

``Books? Oh, yes--yes, I remember.I'll bring them.''

``Thank you so much,'' said she sweetly.``Good-by.''