"Is he still thinking of that Roya-Neh place? It's horridly expensive to keep up. Oh, I knew quite well that Scott would bully you into consenting"
"Roya-Neh seems to suit us both," admitted the girl indifferently. "The shooting and fishing naturally attract Scott; they say it's secluded enough for you and me to recuperate in; and if we ever want any guests, it's big enough to entertain dozens in.... I really don't care one way or the other; you know I never was very crazy about the countryand poison ivy, and mosquitoes and oil-smelling roads, and hot nights, and the perfume of fertilisers"
"You poor child!" laughed Kathleen; "you don't know anything about the country except where you've been on Long Island in the immediate vicinity of your grandfather's horrid old place."
"Is it any more agreeable up there near Canada?"
"Roya-Neh is very lovelyof coursebutit's certainly not a wise investment, dear."
"Well, if Scott and I buy it, we'd never wish to sell it"
"Suppose you were obliged to?"
Geraldine's velvet eyes widened lazily:
"Obliged to? Ohyesyou mean if we went to smash."
Then her gaze became remote as she stood slowly tapping her gloved palm with her riding-crop.
"I think I'll dress," she said absently.
"Good-bye, then," nodded Kathleen.
"Good-bye," said the girl, turning lightly away across the hall. Kathleen's eyes followed the slender retreating figure, so slimly compact in its buoyancy. There was always something fascinatingly boyish in Geraldine's light, free carriagejust a touch of carelessness in the poisealmost a swing at times to the step. Duane had once said: "She has a bully walk!" Kathleen thought of it as, passing a mirror, she caught sight of herself. And the sudden glimpse of her own warm, rich beauty in all its exquisite maturity startled her. Surely she seemed to be growing younger.
She was. Dark-violet eyes, ruddy hair, a superb figure, a skin so white that it looked fragrant, made Kathleen Severn amazingly attractive. Men found her, to their surprise, rather unresponsive. She was amiable enough, nicely formal, and perfectly bred, it is true, but inclined to that sort of aloofness which is marked by lapses of inattention and the smiling silences of preoccupation.
She had married, very young, an army officer convalescing from Texan fever. He died suddenly on the very eve of their postponed wedding-trip. This was enough to account for lapses of inattention in any woman.
But Kathleen Severn had never been demonstrative. She was slow to care for people. Besides, the responsibility of bringing up the Seagrave twins had been sufficient to subdue anybody's spirits. She was only nineteen and a widow of a month when her distant relative, Magnelius Grandcourt, found her the position as personal guardian of the twins, then aged nine. Now they were twenty-one and she thirty-one; twelve years of service, twelve years of steady fidelity, which long ago had become a changeless and passionate devotion, made up of all she might have given to the dead, and of the unborn happiness she had never known. What other sort of love, if there was any, lay within her undeveloped, nobody knew because nobody had ever aroused it.
Sunshine transformed into great golden transparencies the lowered shades in the living room where Geraldine stood, pensive, distraite, idly twirling her crop by the loop. Presently it flew off her gloved forefinger and fell clattering across the carpetless floor. She bathed and dressed leisurely; later, when luncheon was brought to her, she dropped into a low, wide chair and, ignoring everything except the strawberries, turned her face to the breeze which was softly rattling the southern curtains.
Errant thoughts, light as summer fleece, drifted across her mind. Often, in such moments, she strove to realise that she was now mistress of herself; but never could completely.
"For example: if I want to buy Roya-Neh," she mused, biting into an enormous strawberry, "I can do it.... All I have to do is to say that I'll buy it.... And I can live there if I chooseas long as I choose.... It's a very agreeable sensation.... I can have anything I fancy, without asking Mr. Tappan.... It's rather odd that I don't want anything."
She crossed her ankles and lay back watching the sun-moats floating.
"Suppose," she murmured with perverse humour, "that I wished to build a bungalow in Timbuctoo or stand on my head, now, this very moment! Nobody on earth could stop me.... I believe I will stand on my head for a change."
The sudden smile made the curve of her cheek delicious. She sprang to her feet, spread her napkin on the polished floor, then gravely bending double, placed both palms flat on the square of damask, balanced and raised her body until the straight, slim limbs were rigidly pointed toward heaven.
Down tumbled her hair; her cheeks crimsoned; then dainty as a lithe and spangled athlete, she turned clean over in the air, landing lightly on both feet breathing fast.
"It's disgraceful!" she murmured; "I am certainly out of condition. Late hours are my undoing. Also cigarettes. I wish I didn't like to smoke."
She lighted one and strolled about the room, knotting up her dark hair, heels clicking sharply over the bare, polished floor.
Lacking a hair-peg, she sauntered off to her own apartments to find one, where she remained, lolling in the chaise-longue, alternately blowing smoke rings into the sunshine and nibbling a bonbon soaked in cologne. Only a girl can accomplish such combinations. How she ever began this silly custom of hers she couldn't remember, except that, when a small child, somebody had forbidden her to taste brandied peach syrup, which she adored; and the odour of cologne being similarly pleasant, she had tried it on her palate and found that it produced agreeable sensations.
It had become a habit. She was conscious of it, but remained indifferent because she didn't know anything about habits.
So all that sunny afternoon she lay in the chaise-longue, alternately reading and dreaming, her scented bonbons at her elbow. Later a maid brought tea; and a little later Duane Mallett was announced. He sauntered in, a loosely knit, graceful figure, still wearing his riding-clothes and dusty boots of the morning.
Geraldine Seagrave had had time enough to discover, during the past winter, that her old playfellow was not at all the kind of man he appeared to be. Women liked him too easily and he liked them without effort. There was always some girl in love with him until he was found kissing another. His tastes were amiably catholic; his caress instinctively casual. Beauty when responsive touched him. No girl he knew needed to remain unconsoled.
The majority of women liked him; so did Geraldine Seagrave. The majority instinctively watched him; so did she. In close acquaintance the man was a disappointment. It seemed as though there ought to be something deeper in him than the lightly humourous mockery with which he seemed to regard his very great talenta flippancy that veiled always what he said and did and thought until nobody could clearly understand what he really thought about anything; and some people doubted that he thought at allparticularly the thoughtless whom he had carelessly consoled.
Women were never entirely indifferent concerning him; there remained always a certain amount of curiosity, whether they found him attractive or otherwise.
His humourous indifference to public opinions, bordering on effrontery, was not entirely unattractive to women, but it always, sooner or later, aroused their distrust.
The main trouble with Duane Mallett seemed to be his gaily cynical willingness to respond to any advance, however slight, that any pretty woman offered. This responsive partiality was disconcerting enough to make him dreaded by ambitious mothers, and an object of uneasy interest to their decorative offspring who were inclined to believe that a rescue party of one might bring this derelict into port and render him seaworthy for the voyage of life under their own particular command.
Besides, he was a painter. Women like them when they are carefully washed and clothed.
As Duane Mallett strolled into the living-room, Geraldine felt again, as she so often did, a slight sense of insecurity mingle with her liking for the man, or what might have been liking if she could ever feel absolute confidence in him. She had been, at times, very close to caring a great deal for him, when now and again it flashed over her that there must be in him something serious under his brilliant talent and the idle perversity which mocked at it.
But now she recognised in his smile and manner everything that kept her from ever caring to understand himthe old sense of insecurity in his ironical formality; and her outstretched hand fell away from his with indifference.
"I didn't have the happiness of riding with you, after all," he said, serenely seating himself and dropping one lank knee over the other. "Promises wouldn't be valuable unless somebody broke a lot now and then."
"You probably had the happiness of riding with some other woman."
He nodded.
"Who, this time?"
"Rosalie Dysart."
Rumour had been busy with their names recently. The girl's face became expressionless.
"Sorry you didn't come," he said, looking out of the window where the flapping shade revealed a lilac in bloom.
"How long did you wait for me?"
"About a minute. Then Rosalie passed"
"Rosalies will always continue to pass through your career, my omnivorous friend.... Did it even occur to you to ride over here and find out why I missed our appointment?"
"No; why didn't you come?"
"Bibi went lame. I'd have had another horse saddled if I hadn't seen you, over my shoulder, join Mrs. Dysart."
"Too bad," he commented listlessly.
"Why? You had a perfectly good time without me, didn't you?"
"Oh, yes, pretty good. Delancy Grandcourt was out after luncheon, and when Rosalie left he stuck to me and talked about you until I let my horse bolt, and it stirred up a few mounted policemen and riding-schools, I can tell you!"
"Oh, so you lunched with Mrs. Dysart?"
"Yes. Where is Kathleen?"
"Driving," said the girl briefly. "If you don't care for any tea, there is mineral water and a decanter over there."
He thanked her, rose and mixed himself what he wanted, and began to walk leisurely about, the ice tinkling in the glass which he held. At intervals he quenched his thirst, then resumed his aimless promenade, a slight smile on his face.
"Has anything particularly interesting happened to you, Duane?" she asked, and somehow thought of Rosalie Dysart.
"No."
"How are your pictures coming on?"
"The portrait?" he asked absently.
"Portrait? I thought all the very grand ladies you paint had left town. Whose portrait are you painting?"
Before he answered, before he even hesitated, she knew.
"Rosalie Dysart's," he said, gazing absently at the lilac-bush in flower as the wind-blown curtain revealed it for a moment.
She lifted her dark eyes curiously. He began to stir the ice in his glass with a silver paper-cutter.
"She is wonderfully beautiful, isn't she?" said the girl.
"Overwhelmingly."
Geraldine shrugged and gazed into space. She didn't exactly know why she had given that little hitch to her shoulders.
"I'd like to paint Kathleen," he observed.
A flush tinted the girl's cheeks. She said nervously:
"Why don't you ask her?"
"I've meant to. Somehow, one doesn't ask things lightly of Kathleen."
"One doesn't ask things of some women at all," she remarked.
He looked up; she was examining her empty teacup with fixed interest.
"Ask what sort of thing?" he inquired, walking over to the table and resting his glass on it.
"Oh, I don't know what I meant. Nothing. What is that in your glass? Let me taste it.... Ugh! It's Scotch!"
She set back the glass with a shudder. After a few moments she picked it up again and tasted it disdainfully.
"Do you like this?" she demanded with youthful contempt.
"Pretty well," he admitted.
"It tastes something like brandied peaches, doesn't it?"
"I never noticed that it did."
And as he remained smilingly aloof and silent, at intervals, tentatively, uncertain whether or not she exactly cared for it, she tasted the iced contents of the tall, frosty glass and watched him where he sat loosely at ease flicking at sun-moats with the loop of his riding-crop.
"I'd like to see a typical studio," she said reflectively.
"I've asked you to mine often enough."
"Yes, to tea with other people. I don't mean that way. I'd like to see it when it's not all dusted and in order for feminine inspection. I'd like to see a man's studio when it's in shape for workwith the gr-r-reat painter in a fine frenzy painting, and the model posing madly"
"Come on, then! If Kathleen lets you, and you can stand it, come down and knock some day unexpectedly."
"O Duane! I couldn't, could I?"
"Not with propriety. But come ahead."
"Naturally, impropriety appeals to you."
"Naturally. To you, too, doesn't it?"
"No. But wouldn't it astonish you if you heard a low, timid knocking some day when you and your Bohemian friends were carousing and having a riotous time there"
"Yes, it would, but I'm afraid that low, timid knocking couldn't be heard in the infernal uproar of our usual revelry."
"Then I'd knock louder and louder, and perhaps kick once or twice if you didn't come to the door and let me in."
He laughed. After a moment she laughed, too; her dark eyes were very friendly now. Watching the amusement in his face, she continued to sip from his tall, frosted glass, quite unconscious of any distaste for it. On the contrary, she experienced a slight exhilaration which was gradually becoming delightful to her.
"Scotch-and-soda is rather nice, after all," she observed. "I had no ideaWhat is the matter with you, Duane?"
"You haven't swallowed all that, have you?"
"Yes, is it much?"
He stared, then with a shrug: "You'd better cut out that sort of thing."
"What?" she asked, surprised.
"What you're doing."
"Tasting your Scotch? Pooh!" she said, "it isn't strong. Do you think I'm a baby?"
"Go ahead," he said, "it's your funeral."
Legs crossed, chin resting on the butt of his riding-crop, he lay back in his chair watching her.
Women of her particular type had always fascinated him; Fifth Avenue is thronged with them in sunny winter morningstall, slender, faultlessly gowned girls, free-limbed, narrow of wrist and foot; cleanly built, engaging, fearless-eyed; and Geraldine was one of a type characteristic of that city and of the sunny Avenue where there pass more beautiful women on a December morning than one can see abroad in half a dozen years' residence.
How on earth this hemisphere has managed to evolve them out of its original material nobody can explain. And young Mallett, recently from the older hemisphere, was still in a happy trance of surprise at the discovery.
Lounging there, watching her where she sat warmly illumined by the golden light of the window-shade, he said lazily:
"Do you know that Fifth Avenue is always thronged with you, Geraldine? I've nearly twisted my head off trying not to miss the assorted visions of you which float past afoot or driving. Some day one of them will unbalance me. I'll leap into her victoria, ask her if she'd mind the temporary inconvenience of being adored by a stranger; and if she's a good sport she'll take a chance. Don't you think so?"
"It's more than I'd take with you," said the girl.
"You've said that several times."
He laughed, then looked up at her half humorously, half curiously.