Athalie Part 13

"I am with Wahlbaum, Grossman & Co."

"Are they decent to you?"

"Very."

He thought a moment, hesitated, appeared as though about to speak, then seemed to reject the idea whatever it might have been.

"You live with your sisters, don't you?" he asked.

"Yes."

He planted his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, his head on his hands, apparently buried in thought.

After a little while: "C. Bailey, Junior," she ventured, "you must not let me keep you too long."

"What?" He lifted his head.

"You are on your way to the opera, aren't you?"

"Am I? That's so.... I'd rather stay here if you'll let me."

"But the _opera_!" she protested with emphasis.

"What do I care for the opera?"

"Don't you?"

He laughed: "No; do you?"

"I'm mad about it."

Still laughing he said: "Then, in my place, _you_ wouldn't give up the opera for _me_, would you, Athalie?"

She started to say "No!" very decidedly; but checked herself. Then, deliberately honest:

"If," she began, "I were going to the opera, and you came in here--after four years of not seeing you--and if I had to choose--I don't believe I'd go to the opera. But it would be a dreadful wrench, C. Bailey, Junior!"

"It's no wrench to me."

"Because you often go."

"Because, even if I seldom went there could be no question of choice between the opera and Athalie Greensleeve."

"C. Bailey, Junior, you are not honest."

"Yes, I am. Why do you say so?"

"I judge by past performances," she said, her humorous eyes on him.

"Are you going to throw past performances in my face every time I come to see you?"

"Are you coming again?"

"That isn't generous of you, Athalie--"

"I really mean it," said the girl. "Are you?"

"Coming here? Of course I am if you'll let me!"

The last time he had said, "If you _want_ me." Now it was modified to "If you'll _let_ me,"--a development and a new footing to which neither were yet accustomed, perhaps not even conscious of.

"C. Bailey, Junior, do you want to come?"

"I do indeed. It is so bully of you to be nice to me after--everything. And it's so jolly to talk over--things--with you."

She leaned forward in her chair, her pretty hands joined between her knees.

"Please," she said, "don't say you'll come if you are not coming."

"But I am--"

"I know you said so twice before.... I don't mean to be horrid or to reproach you, but--I am going to tell you--I was disappointed--even a--a little--unhappy. And it--lasted--some time.... So, if you are not coming, tell me so now.... It is hard to wait--too long."

"Athalie," he said, completely surprised by the girl's frank avowal and by the unsuspected emotion in himself which was responding, "I am--I had no idea--I don't deserve your kindness to me--your loyalty--I'm a--I'm a--a pup! That's what I am--an undeserving, ungrateful, irresponsible, and asinine pup! That's what all boys in college are--but it's no excuse for not keeping my word--for making you unhappy--"

"C. Bailey, Junior, you were just a boy. And I was a child.... I am still, in spite of my nineteen years--nearly twenty at that--not much different, not enough changed to know that I'm a woman. I feel exactly as I did toward you--not grown up,--or that you have grown up.... Only I know, somehow, I'd have a harder time of it now, if you tell me you'll come, and then--"

"I _will_ come, Athalie! I _want_ to," he said impetuously. "You're more interesting,--a lot jollier,--than any girl I know. I always suspected it, too--the bigger fool I to lose all that time we might have had together--"

She, surprised for a moment, lifted her pretty head and laughed outright, checking his somewhat impulsive monologue. And he looked at her, disturbed.

"I'm only laughing because you speak of all those years we might have had together, as though--" And suddenly she checked herself in her turn, on the brink of saying something that was not so funny after all.

Probably he understood what impulse had prompted her to terminate abruptly both laughter and discourse, for he reddened and gazed rather fixedly at the radiator which was now clanking and clinking in a very noisy manner.

"You ought to have a fireplace and an open fire," he said. "It's the cosiest thing on earth--with a cat on the hearth and a big chair and a good book.... Athalie, do you remember that stove? And how I sat there in wet shooting clothes and stockinged feet?"

"Yes," she said, drawing her own bare ones further under her chair.

"Do you know what you looked like to me when you came in so silently, dressed in your red hood and cloak?"

"What did I look like?"

"A little fairy princess."

"_I?_ In that ragged cloak?"

"_I_ didn't see the rags. All I saw was your lithe little fairy figure and your yellow hair and your wonderful dark eyes in the ruddy light from the stove. I tell you, Athalie, I was enchanted."