The Making of a Prig Part 16

there wouldn't be any sin left."

"And I believe you would be sorry for it, wouldn't you?" said Katharine suddenly. But when, instead of contradicting her, he tried to make her explain her meaning, she only shook her head resolutely.

"I don't think I could; I hardly know myself. It was only something that came into my head at the moment. It was something horrid; don't let us talk about it any more. Are you coming out with me, or not? Ah, I know you are not coming, now!"

She was swift to notice the least change in his expression, and it had grown very dark in the last ten minutes. He held her out at arms'

length, by her two elbows, and smiled rather uncomfortably.

"I think I won't to-day, dear. Another time, eh? This brief must be looked to at once; and I have some other work, too. Go and enjoy your holiday, without me for a discordant element."

Katharine flushed up hotly, and loosed herself from his grasp. "I don't mind your not coming," she said, looking steadily on the ground, "but I don't think you need bother to invent excuses for _me_."

Paul shrugged his shoulders with an indifference that maddened her.

"All right; I won't, then. Go and find some one else for a companion, and don't be a young silly. Can't Ted get off for to-day?"

"You have never said so many horrid things to me before," cried Katharine pa.s.sionately.

"You have never been so difficult to please before," observed Paul coolly. "Besides, I was under the impression that I was making rather a good suggestion."

"You always drag up Ted when you are being particularly unkind! If I had wanted to go out with Ted, I shouldn't have come to you first."

Paul began to fear a scene; and he had more than a man's horror of scenes. But he could not help seeing the tears in her eyes as she walked away to the door, and he caught her up just as she was opening it.

"Aren't you going to say good-bye? It may be some time before I see you again." He determined, as he spoke, that it should certainly be a very long time before he saw her again. But she disarmed him by turning round swiftly without a trace of her anger left.

"Oh, why must it be some time? You don't mean it, do you? Say you don't mean it, Mr. Wilton," she implored.

"No, no; I was only joking," he said rea.s.suringly. "Quite soon, of course." And he dropped a kiss on the little pink ear that was nearest to him. But when he saw the look on her face, and the quick way in which her breath was coming and going, he blamed himself for his indiscretion, and pushed her playfully outside the door.

When Phyllis Hyam came home from the office, that evening, she found Katharine on the floor of her cubicle, mending stockings; while the rest of her wardrobe occupied all the available s.p.a.ce to be seen.

Katharine never did things by halves, and she very rarely had the impulse to mend her clothes.

"Hullo! do you mean to say you are back already?" cried Phyllis, tripping clumsily over the dresses on the floor.

"That hardly demands an answer, does it?" said Katharine, without looking up. She threaded her needle, and added more graciously, "I didn't go, after all."

"Oh," said Phyllis wonderingly. "I'm sorry."

"You needn't bother, thanks. I didn't want to go. I stayed at home instead, and mended my clothes; they seemed to want it, rather. I shall be quite respectable, now."

"Oh!" said Phyllis again. "I should have left it for a wet day, I think."

"Perhaps your work allows you to select your holidays according to the weather. Mine doesn't," said Katharine sarcastically.

Phyllis cleared the chair, and sat down upon it.

"You've been crying," she said, with the bluntness that estranged all her friends in time. Katharine never minded it; it rather appealed to her love of truth than otherwise.

"Oh, yes! I was disappointed, that's all. There was nothing really to cry about. I don't know why I did. Don't sit there and stare, Phyllis; I know I have made a sight of myself."

"No, you haven't. Poor old dear!" said Phyllis, with ill-timed affection. "I should like to tell him what I think of him, I know!"

she added emphatically.

"What are you muttering about?" asked Katharine.

"Oh, nothing," said Phyllis. "Have you had any tea?"

"I don't want any tea, thank you. I wish you wouldn't bother. Go down and have your own."

"Guess I shall bring it up here instead, and then we can talk," said Phyllis. In about ten minutes she returned, very much out of breath, with a large tray.

Katharine looked up and frowned. "I said I didn't want any," she said crossly. However, she added that she believed there was some shortbread on the book-case, which Phyllis at once annexed; and her temper began slowly to improve.

"Phyllis," she asked abruptly, after a long pause, "what do you think of men?"

"That they are luxuries," returned Phyllis, without hesitation. "If you've nothing to do all day but to play about, you can afford to have a man or two around you; but if you're busy, you can't do with them, anyhow."

"Why not?" demanded Katharine. "Don't you think they help one along, rather?"

"Not a bit of it! First, they draw you on, because you seem to hold off; and then, when you begin to warm up, they come down with a quencher, and you feel you've been a sight too bold. And all that kind of thing is distracting; and it affects your work after a time."

"But surely," said Katharine, "a girl can have a man for a friend without going through all that!"

"Don't believe in it; never did; it doesn't work."

"I think it does, sometimes," observed Katharine. "Of course it depends on the girl."

"Entirely," said Phyllis cheerfully. "The man would always spoil it, if he could--without being found out."

Katharine leaned back on the pillow, with her arms behind her head, and her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

"That's just it," she said thoughtfully; "men are so much more conventional than women. I am glad I am not a man, after all. There is no need for a woman to be conventional, is there? She isn't afraid of being suspected, all the time. I'm certain conventionality was made for man, and not man for conventionality, and that woman never had a hand in it at all."

"I don't know about that, though it sounds very fine," said Phyllis.

"But of course men have to be more conventional than we are. It helps them to make some show of respectability, I guess."

"It is very horrible, if one a.n.a.lyses it," murmured Katharine.

"According to that, the man who is openly bad is preferable to the man who is conventionally good. Of course Paul is not bad at all; but, oh!

I do wish I didn't see through people, when they try to pretend things,--it always annoys them."

"Eh?" said Phyllis, looking up. "Your tea is getting cold."

"Never mind about the tea! Tell me, Phyllis, do you think any woman can attract any man, if she likes?"

"Of course she can, if she is not in love with him."

Katharine winced, and brought her eyes down to look at her unconscious friend, who was still munching shortbread with an expression of complete contentment on her face.

"I mean if she _is_ in love with him, very much in love with him."