The Conflict Part 36

If he had been looking at Jane, he might have seen the fleeting flash of an expression that betrayed that she had suspected the object of his inquiry.

"You will not go with me to your father?"

"Not when he is ill," said she. "If we told him, it might kill him.

He has ambitions--what he regards as ambitions--for me. He admires you, but--he doesn't admire your ideas."

"Then," said Victor, following his own train of thought, "we must fight this out between ourselves. I was hoping I'd have your father to help me. I'm sure, as soon as you faced him with me, you'd realize that your feeling about me is largely a delusion."

"And you?" said Jane softly. "Your feeling about me--the feeling that made you kiss me--was that delusion?"

"It was--just what you saw," replied he, "and nothing more. The idea of marrying you--of living my life with you doesn't attract me in the least. I can't see you as my wife." He looked at her impatiently.

"Have you no imagination? Can't you see that you could not change, and become what you'd have to be if you lived with me?"

"You can make of me what you please," repeated she with loving obstinacy.

"That is not sincere!" cried he. "You may think it is, but it isn't.

Look at me, Jane."

"I haven't been doing anything else since we met," laughed she.

"That's better," said he. "Let's not be solemn. Solemnity is pose, and when people are posing they get nowhere. You say I can make of you what I please. Do you mean that you are willing to become a woman of my cla.s.s--to be that all your life--to bring up your children in that way--to give up your fashionable friends--and maid--and carriages--and Paris clothes--to be a woman who would not make my a.s.sociates and their families uncomfortable and shy?"

She was silent. She tried to speak, but lifting her eyes before she began her glance encountered his and her words died upon her lips.

"You know you did not mean that," pursued he. "Now, I'll tell you what you did mean. You meant that after you and I were married--or engaged--perhaps you did not intend to go quite so far as marriage just yet."

The color crept into her averted face.

"Look at me!" he commanded laughingly.

With an effort she forced her eyes to meet his.

"Now--smile, Jane!"

His smile was contagious. The curve of her lips changed; her eyes gleamed.

"Am I not reading your thoughts?" said he.

"You are very clever, Victor," admitted she.

"Good. We are getting on. You believed that, once we were engaged, I would gradually begin to yield, to come round to your way of thinking.

You had planned for me a career something like Davy Hull's--only freer and bolder. I would become a member of your cla.s.s, but would pose as a representative of the cla.s.s I had personally abandoned. Am I right?"

"Go on, Victor," she said.

"That's about all. Now, there are just two objections to your plan.

The first is, it wouldn't work. My a.s.sociates would be 'on to' me in a very short time. They are shrewd, practical, practically educated men--not at all the sort that follow Davy Hull or are wearing Kelly's and House's nose rings. In a few months I'd find myself a leader without a following--and what is more futile and ridiculous than that?"

"They worship you," said Jane. "They trust you implicitly. They know that whatever you did would be for their good."

He laughed heartily. "How little you know my friends," said he. "I am their leader only because I am working with them, doing what we all see must be done, doing it in the way in which we all see it must be done."

"But THAT is not power!" cried Jane.

"No," replied Victor. "But it is the career I wish--the only one I'd have. Power means that one's followers are weak or misled or ignorant.

To be first among equals--that's worth while. The other thing is the poor tawdriness that kings and bosses crave and that shallow, sn.o.bbish people admire."

"I see that," said Jane. "At least, I begin to see it. How wonderful you are!"

Victor laughed. "Is it that I know so much, or is it that you know so little?"

"You don't like for me to tell you that I admire you?" said Jane, subtle and ostentatiously timid.

"I don't care much about it one way or the other," replied Victor, who had, when he chose, a rare ability to be blunt without being rude.

"Years ago, for my own safety, I began to train myself to care little for any praise or blame but my own, and to make myself a very searching critic of myself. So, I am really flattered only when I win my own praise--and I don't often have that pleasure."

"Really, I don't see why you bother with me," said she with sly innocence--which was as far as she dared let her resentments go.

"For two reasons," replied he promptly. "It flatters me that you are interested in me. The second reason is that, when I lost control of myself yesterday, I involved myself in certain responsibilities to you.

It has seemed to me that I owe it to myself and to you to make you see that there is neither present nor future in any relations between us."

She put out her hand, and before he knew what he was doing he had clasped it. With a gentle, triumphant smile she said: "THERE'S the answer to all your reasoning, Victor."

He released her hand. "AN answer," he said, "but not the correct answer." He eyed her thoughtfully. "You have done me a great service," he went on. "You have shown me an unsuspected, a dangerous weakness in myself. At another time--and coming in another way, I might have made a mess of my career--and of the things that have been entrusted to me." A long pause, then he added, to himself rather than to her, "I must look out for that. I must do something about it."

Jane turned toward him and settled herself in a resolute att.i.tude and with a resolute expression. "Victor," she said, "I've listened to you very patiently. Now I want you to listen to me. What is the truth about us? Why, that we are as if we had been made for each other. I don't know as much as you do. I've led a much narrower life. I've been absurdly mis-educated. But as soon as I saw you I felt that I had found the man I was looking for. And I believe--I feel--I KNOW you were drawn to me in the same way. Isn't that so?"

"You--fascinated me," confessed he. "You--or your clothes--or your perfume."

"Explain it as you like," said she. "The fact remains that we were drawn together. Well--Victor, _I_ am not afraid to face the future, as fate maps it out for us. Are you?"

He did not answer.

"You--AFRAID," she went on. "No--you couldn't be afraid."

A long silence. Then he said abruptly: "IF we loved each other. But I know that we don't. I know that you would hate me when you realized that you couldn't move me. And I know that I should soon get over the infatuation for you. As soon as it became a question of sympathies--common tastes--congeniality--I'd find you hopelessly lacking."

She felt that he was contrasting her with some one else--with a certain some one. And she veiled her eyes to hide their blazing jealousy. A movement on his part made her raise them in sudden alarm. He had risen. His expression told her that the battle was lost--for the day.

Never had she loved him as at that moment, and never had longing to possess him so dominated her willful, self-indulgent, spoiled nature.

Yet she hated him, too; she longed to crush him, to make him suffer--to repay him with interest for the suffering he was inflicting upon her--the humiliation. But she dared not show her feelings. It would be idle to try upon this man any of the coquetries indicated for such cases--to dismiss him coldly, or to make an appeal through an exhibition of weakness or reckless pa.s.sion.

"You will see the truth, for yourself, as you think things over," said he.

She rose, stood before him with downcast eyes, with mouth sad and sweet. "No," she said, "It's you who are hiding the truth from yourself. I hope--for both our sakes--that you'll see it before long.

Good-by--dear." She stretched out her hand.

Hesitatingly he took it. As their hands met, her pulse beating against his, she lifted her eyes. And once more he was holding her close, was kissing her. And she was lying in his arms unresisting, with two large tears shining in the long lashes of her closed eyes.

"Oh, Jane--forgive me!" he cried, releasing her. "I must keep away from you. I will--I WILL!" And he was rushing down the steep slope--direct, swift, relentless. But she, looking after him with a tender, dreamy smile, murmured: "He loves me. He will come again. If not--I'll go and get him!"