The Grain of Dust Part 21

She stood before him listlessly, as if she had no interest either in what he was saying or in him. That maddening indifference!

"It was a mistake to tattle your trouble to Tetlow."

"I did not tattle," said she quietly, colorlessly. "I said only enough to make him help me."

"And what did he say about me?"

"That I had misjudged you--that I must be mistaken."

Norman laughed. "How seriously the little people of the world do take themselves!"

She looked at him. His amused eyes met hers frankly. "You didn't mean it?" she said.

He beamed on her. "Certainly I did. But I'm not a lunatic or a wild beast. Do you think I would take advantage of a girl in your position?"

Her eyes seemed to grow large and weary, and an expression of experience stole over her young face, giving it a strange appearance of age-in-youth. "It has been done," said she.

How reconcile such a look with the theory of her childlike innocence?

But then how reconcile any two of the many varied personalities he had seen in her? He said: "Yes--it has been done. But not by me. I shall take from you only what you gladly give."

"You will get nothing else," said she with quiet strength.

"That being settled--" he went on, holding up a small package of papers bound together by an elastic--"Here are the proposed articles of incorporation of the Chemical Research Company. How do you like the name?"

"What is it?"

"The company that is to back your father. Capital stock, twenty-five thousand dollars, one half paid up. Your father to be employed as director of the laboratories at five thousand a year, with a fund of ten thousand to draw upon. You to be employed as secretary and treasurer at fifteen hundred a year. I will take the paid-up stock, and your father and you will have the privilege of buying it back at par within five years. Do you follow me?"

"I think I understand," was her unexpected reply. Her replies were usually unexpected, like the expressions of her face and figure; she was continually comprehending where one would have said she would not, and not comprehending where it seemed absurd that she should not. "Yes, I understand. . . . What else?"

"Nothing else."

She looked intently at him, and her eyes seemed to be reading his soul to the bottom.

"Nothing else," he repeated.

"No obligation--for money--or--for anything?"

"No obligation. A hope perhaps." He was smiling with the gayest good humor. "But not the kind of hope that ever becomes a disagreeable demand for payment."

She seated herself, her hands in her lap, her eyes down--a lovely picture of pensive repose. He waited patiently, feasting his senses upon her delicate, aromatic loveliness. At last she said:

"I accept."

He had antic.i.p.ated an argument. This promptness took him by surprise. He felt called upon to explain, to excuse her acceptance. "I am taking a little flyer--making a gamble," said he. "Your father may turn up nothing of commercial value. Again the company may pay big----"

She gave him a long look through half-closed eyes, a queer smile flitting round her lips. "I understand perfectly why you are doing it,"

she said. "Do you understand why I am accepting?"

"Why should you refuse?" rejoined he. "It is a good business prop----"

"You know very well why I should refuse. But--" She gave a quiet laugh of experience; it made him feel that she was making a fool of him--"I shall not refuse. I am able to take care of myself. And I want father to have his chance. Of course, I shan't explain to him." She gave him a mischievous glance. "And I don't think _you_ will."

He contrived to cover his anger, doubt, chagrin, general feeling of having been outwitted. "No, I shan't tell him," laughed he. "You are making a great fool of me."

"Do you want to back out?"

What audacity! He hesitated--did not dare. Her indifference to him--her personal, her physical indifference gave her the mastery. His teeth clenched and his pa.s.sion blazed in his eyes as he said: "No--you witch!

I'll see it through."

She smiled lightly. "I suppose you'll come to the offices of the company--occasionally?" She drew nearer, stood at the corner of the desk. Into her exquisite eyes came a look of tenderness. "And I shall be glad to see you."

"You mean that?" he said, despising himself for his humble eagerness, and hating her even as he loved her.

"Indeed I do." She smiled bewitchingly. "You are a lot better man than you think."

"I am an awful fool about you," retorted he. "You see, I play my game with all my cards on the table. I wish I could say the same of you."

"I am not playing a game," replied she. "You make a mystery where there isn't any. And--all your cards aren't on the table." She laughed mockingly. "At least, you think there's one that isn't--though, really, it is."

"Yes?"

"About your engagement."

He covered superbly. "Oh," said he in the most indifferent tone. "Tetlow told you."

"As soon as I heard that," she went on, "I felt better about you. I understand how it is with men--the pa.s.sing fancies they have for women."

"How did you learn?" demanded he.

"Do you think a girl could spend several years knocking about down town in New York without getting experience?"

He smiled--a forced smile of raillery, hiding sudden fierce suspicion and jealousy. "I should say not. But you always pretend innocence."

"I can't be held responsible for what you read into my looks and into what I say," observed she with her air of a wise old infant. "But I was so glad to find out that you were seriously in love with a nice girl up town."

He burst out laughing. She gazed at him in childlike surprise. "Why are you laughing at me?" she asked.

"Nothing--nothing," he a.s.sured her. He would have found it difficult to explain why he was so intensely amused at hearing the grand Josephine Burroughs called "a nice girl up town."

"You are in love with her? You are engaged to her?" she inquired, her grave eyes upon him with an irresistible appeal for truth in them.

"Tetlow didn't lie to you," evaded he. "You don't know it, but Tetlow is going to ask you to marry him."

"Yes, I knew," replied she indifferently.

"How? Did he tell you?"

"No. Just as I knew you were not going to ask me to marry you."