The Forbidden Way

She smiled approvingly.

"Then my efforts were unnecessary."

"Your efforts?"

"Yes, I willed it. You interested me, you see."

He looked at her quickly. Her eyes only closed sleepily, then opened again.

"I'm lucky," he said, "that's sure."

"How do you know? I may not be at all the kind of person you think I am."

"I'll take a chance on that – but I wish you'd tell me what made you want me."

"I was bored. I usually am. The Bent parties are so formal and tiresome. Everybody always says the same things – does the same things." She sighed deeply. "If Cousin Cornelius saw me now I'd be in disgrace. I wonder why I always like to do the things people don't expect me to."

"You wouldn't be much of a woman if you didn't," he laughed. "But I like surprises. There wouldn't be much in life if you knew what was going to happen every minute."

"You didn't think I was going to happen then?"

"Er – no. Maybe I hoped so."

"Well," she smiled, "I have happened. What are you going to do about it?"

"Be thankful – mostly. You seem sort of human, somehow. You do what you want to – say what you want – "

"And if I don't get what I want, ask for it," she laughed. "I told Gladys it was very inconsiderate of her not to send you in to dinner with me. She's always doing that sort of thing. Gladys lacks a sense of proportion. As it is, the evening is almost gone, and we've only begun."

"I feel as if I'd known you for years," said Jeff heartily. "That's funny, too," he added, "because you're so different from any other woman I've ever known. You look as if you might have come from a book – but you speak out like Mesa City."

"Tell me about Mesa City. You know I was out West last year."

"Were you? Sure?" eagerly. "In Colorado?"

"Oh, yes," she said slowly, "but I was living in Nevada."

"Nevada? That was my old stamping ground. I punched for the Bar Circle down there. What part?"

"Reno."

"Oh!"

"I went there for my divorce."

His voice fell a note. "I didn't know that. I'm awfully sorry you were so unfortunate. Won't you tell me about it?"

"There's nothing to tell. Cheyne and I were incompatible – at least that's what the lawyers said. As such things go, I thought we got along beautifully. We weren't in the least incompatible so long as Cheyne went his way and let me go mine. It's so easy for married people to manage, if they only knew how. But Cheyne didn't. He didn't want to be with me himself – and he didn't want any one else to be. So things came to a pretty pass. It actually got so bad that when people wanted either of us to dinner they had to write first to inquire which of us was to stay away. It made a lot of trouble, and the Cheyne family got to be a bore – so we decided to break it up."

"Was he unkind to you – cruel?"

"Oh, dear, no! I wish he had been. Our life was one dreadful round of cheerful monotony. I got so tired of the shape of his ears that I could have screamed. Yes, I really think," she mused, "that it was his ears."

Wray examined her with his baby-like stare as though she had been a specimen of ore. There seemed to be no doubt of the fact that she was quite serious.

"I'm really sorry for him. It is – very sad – "

She threw her head back and laughed softly.

"My dear Mr. Wray, your sympathy is touching – he would appreciate it as much as I do – if he had not already married again."

"Married? Here in New York?"

"Oh, yes. They're living within a stone's throw of my house."

"Do you see him?"

"Of course. I dined with them only last week. You see," and she leaned toward him with an air of new confidences, "that's only human. I can't really give up anything I've once possessed. You know, I try not to sell horses that I've liked. I did sell one once, and he turned up one morning in a hired brougham. That taught me a lesson I've never forgotten. Now when they outlive their usefulness I turn them out on my farm in Westchester. Of course, I couldn't do that to Harold, but I did the next best thing. I've satisfied myself that he's properly looked after – and I'm sure he'll reflect credit on his early training."

"And he's happy?"

"Blissfully so. It wouldn't be possible for a man to have the advantages of a training like the one I have given him and not be able to make a woman happy."

"But he didn't make you happy."

"Me? Oh, I wasn't made for bondage of any kind. Most women marry because they're bored or because they're curious. In either case they pay a penalty. Marriage provides no panacea. One only becomes more bored – with one's own husband – or more curious about other people's husbands."

"Are you curious? You don't look as if you cared enough to be curious."

"I do care." She held her cigarette at arm's length and flicked off its ash with her little finger. "Mr. Wray, I'll let you into a secret. A woman never appears so bored as when she is intensely interested in something – never so much interested as when she is bored to extinction. I am curious. I am trying to learn (without asking you impertinent questions) how on earth you and Mrs. Wray ever happened to marry."

She tilted her chin impudently and looked down her nose at him, her eyes masked by her dark lashes, through which it hardly seemed possible that she could see him at all. Jeff laughed. She had her nerve with her, he thought, but her frankness was amusing. He liked the way she went after what she wanted.

"Oh, Camilla – I don't know. It just happened, I guess. She's more your kind than mine. I'm a good deal of a scrub, Mrs. Cheyne. You see, I never went to college – or even to high school. Camilla knows a lot. She used to teach, but I reckon she's about given up the idea of trying to teach me. I'm a low-brow all right. I never read a novel in my life."

"You haven't missed much. Books were only meant for people who are willing to take life at second-hand. One year of the life you lived on the range is worth a whole shelf-ful. The only way to see life is through one's own eyes."

"Oh, I've seen life. I've been a cowboy, rancher, speculator, miner, and other things. And I've seen some rough times. But I wouldn't have worked at those things if I hadn't needed the money. Now I've got it, maybe I'll learn something of the romantic side of life."

She leaned back and laughed at him. "You dear, delicious man. Then it has never occurred to you that during all these years you've been living a romance?"

He looked at her askance.

"And then, to cap it all," she finished, "you discover a gold mine, and marry the prettiest woman in the West. I suppose you'll call that prosaic, too. You're really quite remarkable. What is it that you expect of life after all?"

"I don't know," he said slowly, "something more – "

"But there's nothing left."