December Love Part 103

"He loves me. He has asked me to marry him."

She turned away, and went to the door and opened it.

"Beryl, come here!"

"Why?"

"Beryl!"

"But what is the good? You refuse to tell me anything, I tell you everything. Now you understand why I feel angry at these horrible accusations."

"You don't mean to tell me you have ever dreamed of marrying such a man!"

"Don't abuse him! I don't wish to hear him abused. I hate it. I won't have it."

"But--Beryl! But only a few days ago you as good as told me you cared for Alick Craven. You--you gave me to understand that you liked him very much, that you--"

"Oh, this is intolerable!" said Miss Van Tuyn. "Really! Why do you interfere in my life like this? What have I done to set you against me?

You talk of being my friend, but you do everything you can to upset my happiness. It is enough that I like anyone for you to try to come between us. First it was Alick Craven! Now it is Mr. Arabian! It is unbearable. You have had your life. You have had a splendid life, everything any woman could wish to have. I am a girl. I am only beginning. Why can't you leave me alone? Why can't you let me have some happiness without thrusting yourself in and trying to spoil everything for me? Won't you ever have had enough? Ever since I have known Mr.

Craven you have tried to get him away from me. And now you are doing your best to make me give up a man who loves me and wants to marry me."

"Beryl! Please!"

"No, I will not bear it. I will not! I admired you. I had a cult for you. Everyone knew it. I went about praising you, telling everyone you were the most wonderful woman I had ever known. You can ask anybody.

People used to laugh at me about my infatuation for you. I stood up for you always. They told me--but I wouldn't believe!"

"What did they tell you?"

"Never mind. But now I begin to believe it is true. You can't bear to see other women happy. That's what it is."

"Beryl, it isn't that! No, it isn't that!"

"You have had it all. But that doesn't satisfy you. You want to prevent other women from having any of the happiness that you can't have now. It is cruel. I never thought you were like that. I took you as a pattern of what a woman of your age should be. I looked up to you. I would have come to you for counsel, for advice. You were my book of wisdom.

I thought you were far above all the pettinesses that disfigure other women, the women who hate us girls, who want to s.n.a.t.c.h everything from us. And now you are trying to do me more harm than any other woman has ever tried to do me!"

"I--I will prove to you that it isn't so!" said Lady Sellingworth.

"Please shut the door."

Miss Van Tuyn obeyed.

"But--but--first tell me something."

"What?"

"Tell me the absolute truth."

"I am not a liar, Adela."

"But sometimes--truth is difficult sometimes."

"What is it you want to know?"

"Do you care for this--do you care for Mr. Arabian?"

"Perhaps I do."

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"Do you mean that you are really thinking of doing what he wishes you to do?"

"I haven't told him yet."

"But you are thinking of marrying him?"

"I know nothing against him. He cares for me very much."

Lady Sellingworth was silent.

"Perhaps you don't believe that? Perhaps you think that's impossible?"

"Oh, no! But--"

"I know exactly what you are thinking. You are thinking that I am rich now that my father is dead. But he is rich too. He does not need my money. He has never done any work. He has been an idler all his life.

He has often told me that he has had too much money and that it has done him harm, made him an idler."

"And you believe all that?"

"I believe that he cares for me very much. I know he does."

"Once I thought that man--"

She stopped.

"Promise me one thing," she said at last in a different voice. "Promise me that you will not marry Mr. Arabian. I won't ask anything else of you; only that."

"But I won't promise. I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because--because I don't know what I am going to do, what I might do."

She looked down, then added in a low voice; "He fascinates me."

For the first time since she had come into the room there was a helpless sound in Miss Van Tuyn's voice, a sound that was wholly girlish, absolutely, transparently sincere. Lady Sellingworth did not miss it.

"I haven't made up my mind," she said. "But he fascinates me."