The Great God Success Part 30

"But don't you see that that drives me from you often, keeps us apart in many ways. Now if you compelled me to think as you do, to like what you like--"

"But I couldn't. Then you would no longer be _you_. And I like you so well just as you are that I would not change an idea in your head."

Marian sighed and went away to her dinner party. She felt that she was in danger. "Not of falling in love with some other man," she thought, "for that's impossible. But if a man were to come along who invited me to be interested in his work, to keep him at whatever he was doing, I'd accept and that would lead on and on--where?"

She soon had an opportunity to answer that question. Howard went away to Washington to a.s.sist the party leaders in putting through a difficult tariff-reform bill which all the protected interests were fighting. He expected to be gone a week; but week after week pa.s.sed and he was still at the capital, directing the paper by telegraph and sending Marian hurried notes postponing his return. She was going about daily, early and late, her life vacant, her mind restlessly seeking occupation, interest.

After he had been gone three weeks she found herself at dinner at Mrs.

Provost's next to a tall, fair-haired athletic young man of about her own age. Something in his expression--perhaps the amused way in which he studied the faces of the others--attracted her to him. She glanced over at his card. It read "Mr. Shenstone."

"It doesn't add much to your information, does it?" he smiled, as he caught her glance rising from the card.

"Nothing," she confessed candidly. "I never heard of you before."

"And yet I've been splashing about, trying to attract attention to myself, for twelve years."

"Perhaps not in this particular pond."

"No, that is true."

"I was wondering what you do--lawyer, doctor, journalist, business man or what.

"And what did you conclude?"

"I concluded that you did nothing."

"You are right. But I try--I paint."

"Portraits?"

"Yes."

"That explains your way of looking at people. Only, you'll get no customers if you paint them as you see them."

"I only see what they see when they look in the mirror."

"Yes, but you see it impartial--or rather, I should say, cynically."

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"For calling me cynical. The two keenest pleasures a man can attain are for a woman to call him a cynic and for a woman to call him a devil with the women."

"Are you a 'devil with the women'?"

"Not I--not any more than I am a cynic. But let us talk about you--I am about exhausted as a topic of conversation. Why do you look so discontented?"

"Because I have nothing to occupy my mind."

"No children?"

"None--and no dogs."

"No husband?"

"Husbands are busy."

"So you are the typical American woman--the American instinct for doing, the universal woman's instinct for sunshine and laziness; the husband absorbed in his business or profession with his domestic life as an incident; the wife--like you."

"That is right, and wrong--nearer right than wrong, a little unjust to the husband."

"Oh, it's probably your fault that you are not absorbed in his business or profession. It ought to be as much yours as his. What does he do?"

"He edits a newspaper."

"Oh, he's _the_ Mr. Howard. A very interesting, a very remarkable man."

Marian was delighted by this appreciation. She talked with Shenstone again after dinner and was pleased that he was to be in the same box with her at the opera the next night. He had spent much of his time on the other side of the Atlantic. He was unusually well educated for an artist's, and his mind was not developed in one direction only. Like Marian, his point of view was artistic and emotional. Like her he had a reverence for tradition, a deference to caste--the latter not offensive for the same reason that hers was not, because good birth and good breeding made him of the "high caste" and not a cringer with his eyes craned upward. It seemed in him, as in her, a sort of self-respect.

Marian showed a candid liking for his society and he was quick to take advantage of it. For a month they saw more and more each of the other, she discreet without deliberation and he discreet with deliberation.

He talked to her of his work, of his ambition. He showed her himself without egotism. He made an impression upon her so distinct and so favourable that she admitted to herself that he was the most fascinating man--except one--whom she had ever met.

When Howard at last returned, defeated by corruption within his own party and for the time disgusted with politics, she at once had Shenstone at the house to dine. "What do you think of Mr. Shenstone?"

she asked when they were alone.

"No wonder you're enthusiastic about him. As he talked to me, I could hardly keep from laughing. It was your own views, almost your own words.

He has the look of a great man. I think he will 'arrive,' as they say in the Bowery."

Howard went out of his way to be agreeable to Shenstone, often inviting him to the house and giving him a commission to paint Marian. For the rest of the winter Shenstone was constantly in Marian's company; so constantly that they were gossiped about, and all the women who were unpleasantly discussed "for cause" conspired to throw them together as much as possible.

One evening in the very end of the winter, Howard called to Marian from his dressing room: "Why, lady, Shenstone's gone, hasn't he? I've just read a note from him."

There was a pause before Marian answered in a constrained voice: "Yes, he sailed to-day."

Howard was tying his bow. He paused at the curious tone, then smiled mysteriously to himself. He put on his waistcoat and coat and knocked on the half-open door. "May I come in?" he asked.

"Yes--I'm waiting for dinner to be announced."

She was sitting before the fire, very beautiful in her evening gown. She seemed not to observe that he had entered but stared on into the flames.

He stood beside her, looking down at her with the half mocking, half tender smile. Presently he sat upon the arm of her chair and took one of her hands. "Poor, friendless, beautiful lady," he said softly.

She glanced up quickly, her cheeks flaming but her eyes clear and frank.

"Why do you say that?" she asked in the tone of one who knows why.

"Other women will not be her friends because they are jealous of her, and as for the men--how can a man be really a friend to a woman, a fascinating, sympathetic woman?"

Marian hid her face against the lapel of his coat. "He told me," she whispered, "and then he went away."