Athalie Part 20

"No, I don't think so.... Are _you_ that way, too?"

He raised his eyes: "Do you think I am, Athalie?"

"No.... But I can't help wondering--a little uneasily at times--how you can find me as--as companionable as you say you do.... I can't help wondering how long it will last."

"It will last as long as you do."

"But you are sure to find me out sooner or later, Clive."

"Find you out?"

"Yes--discover my limits, exhaust my capacity for entertaining you, extract the last atom of amus.e.m.e.nt out of me. And--what _then_?"

"Athalie! What nonsense!"

"Is it?"

"Certainly it's nonsense. How can I possibly tire of such a girl as you? I scarcely even know you yet. I don't begin to know you. Why you are a perfectly unexplored, undiscovered girl to me, yet!"

"Am I?" she asked, laughing. "I supposed you had discovered about all there is to me."

He shook his head, looking at her curiously perplexed: "Every time we meet you are different. You always have interesting views on any subject. You stimulate my imagination. How could I tire?

"Besides, somehow I am always aware of reserved and hidden forces in you--of a character which I only partly know and admire--capabilities, capacities of which I am ignorant except that, intuitively, I seem to know they are part of you."

"Am I as complex as that to you?"

"Sometimes," he admitted. "You are just now for example. But usually you are only a wonderfully interesting and charming girl who brings out the best side of me and keeps me amused and happy every moment that I am with you."

"There really is not much more to me than that," she said in a low voice. "You sum me up--a gay source of amus.e.m.e.nt: nothing more."

"Athalie, you know you are more vital than that to me."

"No, I don't know it."

"You do! You know it in your own heart. You know that it is a straight, clean, ardent friendship that inspires me and--" she looked up, serious, and very quiet.

--"You know," he continued impulsively, "that it is not only your beauty, your loveliness and grace and that inexplicable charm you seem to radiate, that brings me to seek you every time that I have a moment to do so.

"Why, if it were that alone, it would all have been merely a matter of sentiment. Have I ever been sentimental with you?"

"No."

"Have I ever made love to you?"

She did not reply. Her eyes were fixed on her gla.s.s.

"Have I, Athalie?" he repeated.

"No, Clive," she said gently.

"Well then; is there not on my part a very deep, solidly founded, and vital friendship for you? Is there not a--"

"Don't let's talk about it," she interrupted in a low voice. "You always make me very happy; you say I please you--interest and amuse you. That is enough--more than enough--more than I ever hoped or asked--"

"I said you make me happy;--happier than I have ever been," he explained with emphasis. "Do you suppose for a moment that your regard for me is warmer, deeper, more enduring, than is mine for you? Do you, Athalie?"

She lifted her eyes to his. But she had nothing more to say on the subject.

However, he began to insist,--a little impatiently,--on a direct answer. And finally she said:

"Clive, you came into a rather empty life when you came into mine.

Judge how completely you have filled it.... And what it would be if you went out of it. Your own life has always been full. If I should disappear from it--" she ceased.

The quiet, accentless, almost listless dignity of the words surprised and impressed him for a moment; then the reaction came in a faint glow through every vein and a sudden impulse to respond to her with an a.s.surance of devotion a little out of key with the somewhat stately and reserved measure of their duet called friendship.

"You also fill my life," he said. "You give me what I never had--an intimacy and an understanding that satisfies. Had I my way I would be with you all the time. No other woman interests me as you do. There _is_ no other woman."

"Oh, Clive! And all the charming people you know--"

"I know many. None like you, Athalie."

"That is very sweet of you.... I'm trying to believe it.... I want to.... There are many days to fill in when I am not with you. To fill them with such a belief would be to shorten them.... I don't know. I often wonder where you are; what you are doing; with what stately and beautiful creature you are talking, laughing, walking, dancing."--She shrugged her shoulders and gazed down at the dancers below. "The days are very long, sometimes," she added, half to herself.

When again, calmly, she turned to him there was an odd expression on his face, and the next second he reddened and shifted his gaze.

Neither spoke for a few moments.

Presently she began to draw on her gloves, but he continued staring into s.p.a.ce, not noticing her, and finally she bent forward and rested her slim gloved fingers on his hand, lightly, interrogatively.

"Yes; all right," he muttered.

"I have to go to business in the morning," she pleaded. He turned almost impatiently:

"If I had my way you wouldn't go to business at all."

"If I had my way I wouldn't either," she rejoined, smilingly. But his youthful visage remained sober and flushed. And when they were seated in the limousine and the fur rug enveloped them both, he said abruptly:

"I'm getting tired of this business."

"What business, Clive?"

"Everything--the way you live--your inadequate quarters--your having to work all day long in that stuffy office, day after day, year after year!"

She said, surprised and perplexed: "But it can't be helped, Clive! I have to work."

"Why?"

"What do you mean?"