Paradise Garden Part 22

"Why not?" I asked quickly. "Knowledge of evil isn't impurity."

"It will permeate him."

"No. He will repel it."

She smiled knowingly.

"Impossible. Society is rotten. It will tolerate him, then resent him, and finally," she made a wide gesture, "engulf!"

"I'm not afraid," I said staunchly.

"You should be. He's in danger--" She stopped suddenly. "I mean--" She paused again, and then said evenly, "It seems a pity to me, that's all."

"What's a pity?"

"That all your teaching must end in failure."

"H-m! You haven't a very high opinion of your fellows."

"No, men are weak."

"Jerry isn't weak."

"He's human--too human."

"One can be human and still be a philosopher--"

"No."

"But he knows the good from the bad."

"Oh, does he? And if the bad is masquerading? It is always. You think he would recognize it?"

She was speaking in riddles, and yet it seemed to me with a purpose.

"What do you mean, Miss Gore?"

"Merely that such innocence as his is dangerous."

It was an unusual sort of a conversation to be engaged in with a woman I had known but twenty minutes. I think she felt it, too. There was some restraint in her manner, but I realized that her interest in Jerry was driving her, if against her better judgment, with a definite design that would not balk at trifles.

"You seem to know a great deal about Jerry," I said at last. "Who has told you?"

"My eyes are tolerably good, Mr. Canby, my ears excellent."

I would have questioned further, but Jerry and the Van Wyck girl at this moment came out on the terrace. Jerry was laughing.

"Caught in the act," he cried, as they came down to join us. "There's hope for you yet, Roger."

Marcia came and thrust her arm through Miss Gore's. "Isn't it wonderful to be the first woman in the Garden of Paradise?"

Miss Gore nodded carelessly.

The girl was so radiant in her air of possession that I couldn't help speaking.

"But you're not," I said.

Marcia's narrow eyes regarded me coolly and then looked at Jerry inquiringly, and when she spoke her voice was almost too sweet.

"Please don't rob us of our poor little halos, Mr. Canby," she said.

"Do you mean that there have been other women, girls--in here before?"

I can't imagine why Jerry hadn't told her that. She seemed to know about everything else. "Yes, one."

"Jerry!" reproachfully. "And you said I was the first girl you'd ever really known!"

He smiled, though he was quite pink around the ears.

"You are really. Er--she didn't count."

"I shall die of chagrin. Her name, Mr. Canby," she appealed.

I hesitated. But Jerry, still red, blurted out:

"Una Smith. But Roger says that couldn't have been her name."

"But why shouldn't it be her name? She had nothing to be ashamed about, had she?"

"Of course not. She just slipped in through a broken grille. She was a stranger around here--I just happened to meet her and--er--we had a talk."

The boy seemed to be quite ill at ease. What did he already owe this girl Marcia that such an innocent confession made him uncomfortable?

"Una--Una--Smith," the girl was repeating. "This is really beginning to be fearfully interesting. Una," she turned quickly, her eyes widening. In the bright sunlight they seemed very light in color, a dark gray shot with little flecks of yellow. "Of course," she exclaimed. And then, "When was this--er--intrusion, Jerry? Last July?"

"I think so."

It was Jerry's turn to be surprised.

"She was brown-haired, smallish, with blue eyes? Quite pretty?"

Jerry nodded.

"Wore leather gaiters and carried a b.u.t.terfly net?"

"You know her, Marcia?" he broke in.

"Of course. Jerry, I'm really surprised--also a trifle disillusioned--"