The Incomplete Amorist

"And you'll keep my poor little secret?"

"I should have thought you would have been proud for him to know how much you care."

"Ah, my dear," Lady St. Craye became natural for an instant under the transfiguring influence of her real thoughts as she spoke them, "my dear, don't believe it! When a man's sure of you he doesn't care any more. It's while he's not quite sure that he cares."

"I don't think that's so always," said Betty.

"Ah, believe me, there are 'more ways of killing a cat than choking it with butter.' Forgive the homely aphorism. When you have a lover of your own—or perhaps you have now?"

"Perhaps I have." Betty stood on guard with a steady face.

"Well, when you have—or if you have—remember never to let him be quite sure. It's the only way."

The two parted, with a mutually kindly feeling that surprised one as much as the other. Lady St. Craye drove home contrasting bitterly the excellence of her maxims with the ineptitude of her practice. She had let him know that she cared. And he had left her. That was two years ago. And, now that she had met him again, when she might have played the part she had recommended to that chit with the long hair—the part she knew to be the wise one—she had once more suffered passion to overcome wisdom, and had shown him that she loved him. And he had kissed her.

She blushed in the dusk of her carriage for the shame of that kiss.

But he had told that girl that he was engaged to her.

A delicious other flush replaced the blush of shame. Why should he have done that unless he really meant—? In that case the kiss was nothing to blush about. And yet it was. She knew it.

She had time to think in the days that followed, days that brought Temple more than once to her doors, but Vernon never.

Betty left alone let down her damp hair and tried to resume her drawing. But it would not do. The emotion of the interview was too recent. Her heart was beating still with anger, and resentment, and other feelings less easily named.

Vernon was to come to fetch her at seven. She would not face him. Let him go and dine with the woman he belonged to!

Betty went out at half-past six. She would not go to Garnier's, nor to Thirion's. That was where he would look for her.

She walked steadily on, down the boulevard. She would dine at some place she had never been to before. A sickening vision of that first night in Paris swam before her. She saw again the Café d'Harcourt, heard the voices of the women who had spoken to Paula, saw the eyes of the men who had been the companions of those women. In that rout the face of Temple shone—clear cut, severe. She remembered the instant resentment that had thrilled her at his protective attitude, remembered it and wondered at it a little. She would not have felt that now. She knew her Paris better than she had done then.

And with the thought, the face of Temple came towards her out of the crowd. He raised his hat in response to her frigid bow, and had almost passed her, when she spoke on an impulse that surprised herself.

"Oh—Mr. Temple!"

He stopped and turned.

"I was looking for a place to dine. I'm tired of Garnier's and Thirion's."

He hesitated. And he, too, remembered the night at the Café d'Harcourt, when she had disdained his advice and gone back to take the advice of Paula.

He caught himself assuring himself that a man need not be ashamed to risk being snubbed—making a fool of himself even—if he could do any good. So he said: "You know I have horrid old-fashioned ideas about women," and stopped short.

"Don't you know of any good quiet place near here?" said Betty.

"I think women ought to be taken care of. But some of them—Miss Desmond, I'm so afraid of you—I'm afraid of boring you—"

Remorse stirred her.

"You've always been most awfully kind," she said warmly. "I've often wanted to tell you that I'm sorry about that first time I saw you—I'm not sorry for what I did," she added in haste; "I can never be anything but glad for that. But I'm sorry I seemed ungrateful to you."

"Now you give me courage," he said. "I do know a quiet little place quite near here. And, as you haven't any of your friends with you, won't you take pity on me and let me dine with you?"

"You're sure you're not giving up some nice engagement—just to—to be kind to me?" she asked. And the forlornness of her tone made him almost forget that he had half promised to join a party of Lady St. Craye's.

"I should like to come with you—I should like it of all things," he said; and he said it convincingly.

They dined together, and the dinner was unexpectedly pleasant to both of them. They talked of England, of wood, field and meadow, and Betty found herself talking to him of the garden at home and of the things that grew there, as she had talked to Paula, and as she had never talked to Vernon.

"It's so lovely all the year," she said. "When the last mignonette's over, there are the chrysanthemums, and then the Christmas roses, and ever so early in January the winter aconite and the snow-drops, and the violets under the south wall. And then the little green daffodil leaves come up and the buds, though it's weeks before they turn into flowers. And if it's a mild winter the primroses—just little baby ones—seem to go on all the time."

"Yes," he said, "I know. And the wallflowers, they're green all the time.—And the monthly roses, they flower at Christmas. And then when the real roses begin to bud—and when June comes—and you're drunk with the scent of red roses—the kind you always long for at Christmas."

"Oh, yes," said Betty—"do you feel like that too? And if you get them, they're soft limp-stalked things, like caterpillars half disguised as roses by some incompetent fairy. Not like the stiff solid heavy velvet roses with thick green leaves and heaps of thorns. Those are the roses one longs for."

"Yes," he said. "Those are the roses one longs for." And an odd pause punctuated the sentence.

But the pause did not last. There was so much to talk of—now that barrier of resentment, wattled with remorse, was broken down. It was an odd revelation to each—the love of the other for certain authors, certain pictures, certain symphonies, certain dramas. The discovery of this sort of community of tastes is like the meeting in far foreign countries of a man who speaks the tongue of one's mother land. The two lingered long over their coffee, and the "Grand Marnier" which their liking for "The Garden of Lies" led to their ordering. Betty had forgotten Vernon, forgotten Lady St. Craye, in the delightful interchange of:

"Oh, I do like—"

"And don't you like—?"

"And isn't that splendid?"

These simple sentences, interchanged, took on the value of intimate confidences.

"I've had such a jolly time," Temple said. "I haven't had such a talk for ages."

And yet all the talk had been mere confessions of faith—in Ibsen, in Browning, in Maeterlinck, in English gardens, in Art for Art's sake, and in Whistler and Beethoven.

"I've liked it too," said Betty.

"And it's awfully jolly," he went on, "to feel that you've forgiven me"—the speech suddenly became difficult,—"at least I mean to say—" he ended lamely.

"It's I who ought to be forgiven," said Betty. "I'm very glad I met you. I've enjoyed our talk ever so much."

Vernon spent an empty evening, and waylaid Betty as she left her class next day.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I couldn't help it. I suddenly felt I wanted something different. So I dined at a new place."

"Alone?" said Vernon.

"No," said Betty with her chin in the air.

Vernon digested, as best he might, his first mouthful of jealousy—real downright sickening jealousy. The sensation astonished him so much that he lacked the courage to dissect it.

"Will you dine with me to-night?" was all he found to say.