The Incomplete Amorist

"Of course it could be; it is," she said, opening her eyes at him under the brim of her marvel of a hat: "at least it is for simple folk like me. Why don't you wear a window in your breast as I do?"

She laid her perfectly gloved hand on her sables.

"Is there really a window? Can one see into your heart?"

"One can—not the rest. Just the one from whom one feareth nothing, expecteth nothing, hopeth nothing. That's out of the Bible, isn't it?"

"It's near enough," said he. "Of course, to you it's a new sensation to have the window in your breast. Whereas I, from innocent childhood to earnest manhood, have ever been open as the day."

"Yes," she said, "you were always transparent enough. But one is so blind when one is in love."

Her calm references to the past always piqued him.

"I don't think Love is so blind as he's painted," he said: "always as soon as I begin to be in love with people I begin to see their faults."

"You may be transparent, but you haven't a good mirror," she laughed; "you don't see yourself as you are. It isn't when you begin to love people that you see their faults, is it? It's really when they begin to love you."

"But I never begin to love people till they begin to love me. I'm too modest."

"And I never love people after they've done loving me. I'm too—"

"Too what?"

"Too something—forgetful, is it? I mean it takes two to make a quarrel, and it certainly takes two to make a love affair."

"And what about all the broken hearts?"

"What broken hearts?"

"The ones you find in the poets and the story books."

"That's just where you do find them. Nowhere else.—Now, honestly, has your heart ever been broken?"

"Not yet: so be careful how you play with it. You don't often find such a perfect specimen—absolutely not a crack or a chip."

"The pitcher shouldn't crow too loud—can pitchers crow? They have ears, of course, but only the little pitchers. The ones that go to the well should go in modest silence."

"Dear Lady," he said almost impatiently, "what is there about me that drives my friends to stick up danger boards all along my path? 'This way to Destruction!' You all label them. I am always being solemnly warned that I shall get my heart broken one of these days, if I don't look out."

"I wish you wouldn't call me dear Lady," she said; "it's not the mode any more now."

"What may I call you?" he had to ask, turning to look in her eyes.

"You needn't call me anything. I hate being called names. That's a pretty girl—not the dark one, the one with the fur hat."

He turned to look.

Two girls were walking briskly under the falling leaves. And the one with the fur hat was Betty. But it was at the other that he gazed even as he returned Betty's prim little bow. He even turned a little as the carriage passed, to look more intently at the tall figure in shabby black whose arm Betty held.

"Well?" said Lady St. Craye, breaking the silence that followed.

"Well?" said he, rousing himself, but too late. "You were saying I might call you—"

"It's not what I was saying—it's what you were looking. Who is the girl, and why don't you approve of her companion?"

"Who says I don't wear a window in my breast?" he laughed. "The girl's a little country girl I knew in England—I didn't know she was in Paris. And I thought I knew the woman, too, but that's impossible: it's only a likeness."

"One nice thing about me is that I never ask impertinent questions—or hardly ever. That one slipped out and I withdraw it. I don't want to know anything about anything and I'm sorry I spoke. I see, of course, that she is a little country girl you knew in England, and that you are not at all interested in her. How fast the leaves fall now, don't they?"

"No question of your's could be im—could be anything but flattering. But since you are interested—"

"Not at all," she said politely.

"Oh, but do be interested," he urged, intent on checking her inconvenient interest, "because, really, it is rather interesting when you come to think of it. I was painting my big picture—I wish you'd come and see it, by the way. Will you some day, and have tea in my studio?"

"I should love it. When shall I come?"

"Whenever you will."

He wished she would ask another question about Betty, but she wouldn't. He had to go on, a little awkwardly.

"Well, I only knew them for a week—her and her aunt and her father—and she's a nice, quiet little thing. The father's a parson—all of them are all that there is of most respectable."

She listened but she did not speak.

"And I was rather surprised to see her here. And for the moment I thought the woman with her was—well, the last kind of woman who could have been with her, don't you know."

"I see," said Lady St. Craye. "Well, it's fortunate that the dark woman isn't that kind of woman. No doubt you'll be seeing your little friend. You might ask her to tea when I come to see your picture."

"I wish I could." Vernon's manner was never so frank as when he was most on his guard. "She'd love to know you. I wish I could ask them to tea, but I don't know them well enough. And their address I don't know at all. It's a pity; she's a nice little thing."

It was beautifully done. Lady St. Craye inwardly applauded Vernon's acting, and none the less that her own part had grown strangely difficult. She was suddenly conscious of a longing to be alone—to let her face go. She gave herself a moment's pause, caught at her fine courage and said:

"Yes, it is a pity. However, I daresay it's safer for her that you can't ask her to tea. She is a nice little thing, and she might fall in love with you, and then, your modesty appeased, you might follow suit! Isn't it annoying when one can't pick up the thread of a conversation? All the time you've been talking I've been wondering what we were talking about before I pointed out the fur hat to you. And I nearly remember, and I can't quite. That is always so worrying, isn't it?"

Her acting was as good as his. And his perception at the moment less clear than hers.

He gave a breath of relief. It would never have done to have Lady St. Craye spying on him and Betty; and now he knew that she was in Paris he knew too that it would be "him and Betty."

"We were talking," he said carefully, "about calling names."

"Oh, thank you!—When one can't remember those silly little things it's like wanting to sneeze and not being able to, isn't it? But we must turn back, or I shall be late for dinner, and I daren't think of the names my hostess will call me then. She has a vocabulary, you know." She named a name and Vernon thought it was he who kept the talk busy among acquaintances till the moment for parting. Lady St. Craye knew that it was she.

The moment Betty had bowed to Mr. Vernon she turned her head in answer to the pressure on her arm.

"Who's that?" her friend asked.

Betty named him, and in a voice genuinely unconcerned.