The Salamander Part 74

"Oh, there is nothing wrong with him!" she said instantly. "He was in the ministry, in settlement work--very honest, very good. Then he went on a paper. I don't know how it happened! I was very religious then; I wanted to devote my life--"

"But why didn't you break it off, Dodo?"

"I did! But you don't know him! He wouldn't marry me then until he'd saved some money, writing articles and all that sort of thing. Now he can't see how I've changed, how impossible it would be. And oh, it makes me shudder! It's such a narrow walled-in little life! So barren, so ugly!"

"Send him away!"

"If I could! He won't understand. And when I'm with him I feel as if I were being dragged back to all I hate! He's a terrible man! Sometimes I really am afraid he'll force me to marry him. Oh, I a.s.sure you, I am very, very unhappy!"

"And the ring, Dodo?" he said, with a sigh of relief, leaning over and touching her hand.

It was as if a sudden blast of cold air had been let in. She drew back.

"I can't tell you of that now," she said hastily. "When you have the right--and that depends on you--I will tell you, for it is something that I am very glad of!"

"Dodo, I must know. I can't go on like this! I simply can't."

"Neither can I!" she said, with a sudden lump in her throat. "Don't you see how I am going to pieces? Don't you know why I do such wild crazy things? Oh, if I were only sure of you!"

"If I could be sure of _you_!" he retorted bitterly.

"What would you do?" she asked, grasping his arm eagerly. "Would you do as I wish? Would you dare?"

"Dodo, I wish to be divorced and to marry you!" he said abruptly.

She shrank from him with a cry of disappointment. She sought romance, uncalculated and overwhelming; she wished to hear him, driven beyond himself, crying tempestuous words in her ears, ready for any sacrifice; and instead, he was concerned with planning a conventional solution.

"No, no!" she cried, bitterly disillusioned. "Oh, you don't love me as I love you, if you can think only of that!"

"But why not, Dodo?"

"Oh, not marriage! I hate the very word!" she said indignantly. "That would spoil everything! I want to be Dodo! I don't want to change. And you want to make me! What would happen? After a while you would want me to be like your formal women, society women, and I should be bored, or you would get tired of me. And then my heart would break!"

"But, great G.o.d! child, haven't you any morality?" he exclaimed, beyond himself. "Have I always got to protect you against yourself?"

"Is it my morality," she said, opening her eyes, "or what society will think of you, that you are worried about?"

He was silent, without an answer.

"Listen!" she continued determinedly. "This must stop! I said I was going to decide everything on the tenth. I'm not! I can't stand it!

To-morrow I'm going to settle everything. Do you love me enough to run away with me to-morrow?"

"Do you really, honestly, in the bottom of your crazy romantic heart, believe you would do such a thing?" he asked solemnly.

She was instantly a-tremble with an electric ardor.

"Would I? Would I sacrifice this for something real, something immense, for a perfect blinding love? Oh, how can you ask!"

"And if I come to-morrow and say 'Come!' you will leave everything and go with me, anywhere?"

She put her two hands in his with a gesture of a Siddons.

"Anywhere!"

He retained his doubts, but he did not discuss. Finally he said:

"Very well! To-morrow afternoon I will come and tell you my decision!

You are right. This must end, one way or the other!"

"When?"

"At five o'clock!"

"At five, then. If not--"

"If not, what?"

"I shall have made another decision!"

They said little during the remainder of the trip back, the gravity of the crisis that had been imposed affecting them both. She had only faint belief that he would come, as she wished him to come; and her eyes resting on the sudden electric paraphernalia of the theaters, the gilded outward trappings, the billboards, and the displays on the sidewalk, she lost herself in reveries, feeling the mountain of drudgery she would have to move. Besides, another thing obtruded itself between them--the lie, slight as it had been, that she had told. She was vaguely aware of it, unable to return into the intimacy of her first clinging att.i.tude.

Arrived at the house, he mounted the steps with her, and said gravely:

"Very well, Dodo! I take you at your word. I don't know what it will be.

What you ask from me is as great, probably a greater sacrifice than you would make. But I may do as you wish! To-morrow, in any case, I will come!"

He did not attempt to kiss her in the shadow of the vestibule, nor did she think of it. It was very serious, this parting. She felt the weight of the impending decision as she went slowly to her room, and she found herself halting, from time to time, in the dark ascent, a little frightened, a little strange, asking herself if it were possible, after all, if the incredible were to come, if he really was to put her to the test.

CHAPTER x.x.x

Sa.s.soon came to see her the first thing in the morning, just as she was completing her toilet. For, though over the city was the heavy somnolence of Sunday, she could not sleep; in fact, she had scarcely closed her eyes all night. It was daylight, and yet it was unreal. She was asking herself, incredulously, if the moment of decision had come,--the hour she had contemplated, it seemed, all her life,--when Josephus brought his card. It gave her quite a shock, this return of the persistent hunter, whom she had left, groveling and stunned, at the foot of a disordered table. What did it mean? She glanced at the card again.

Across it was written in minuscule letters:

"_Please see me, just for a moment!_"

She hesitated, tempted by the sudden and the inexplicable. Was it possible that he credited her with acting a part, that his pa.s.sion could crowd out all sense of shame? And, finally, what could he say, after last night?

"I'll be down in a few minutes!" she said, with a nod. Then she recalled Josephus hastily, giving explicit orders that, if Nebbins came, he was to be told that she had gone on a visit, that she would not be back until the next noon; under no circ.u.mstances was he to be admitted. She glanced uneasily into the room where Snyder, curled up in a ball on the bed, was sleeping the heavy sleep of those who consume the night six days of the week. What would she say to Snyder, and how avoid her questioning glances, this day of days?

When, at length, she entered the stuffy parlor, she beheld Sa.s.soon in the raw, no longer languid and heavy of eye, but uncontrollably aroused, pacing the floor in feverish impatience. The look he gave her was so like that of a maddened animal that she halted, afraid; and the fear that ran through her bones was not only of the present, but a sudden terrified comprehension of the past--of what she had risked and escaped.

She remained standing, with the table interposed as a barrier between them.

"Sit down--please!" he said, looking at her eagerly, in his voice a note of hoa.r.s.e avidity that gave it a strange hurried quality.

"What have you to say to me?" she said, without moving.