VI
“Julia,” said Tay, as they emerged into Tilney Street, “what is your idea of something real devilish?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that after that flow of soul, I am in a mood to whoop it up, paint the town magenta, get up on a box in Hyde Park and holler, but not to suffragettes. And I want your company. Can’t you feel that way?”
“Perhaps,” admitted Julia, laughing. “What a boy you still are.”
“Not so much of a boy as you think, but enough. But I don’t know your tastes in crime. Give me a hint, and we’ll do it.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t any.”
“You are as truthful as a woman can be, so investigate your possibilities and own up. Admit that under my demoralizing influence you are suffering some from reaction.”
“I believe I am.” Julia laughed again, with youth in her voice.
“I surmised as much, if only on general principles. I am subject to violent reactions myself. You’ve been good too long. If you don’t take a mild fling or two, your nervous system will dictate that you rise in the night and blow up the Prime Minister. Suppose we walk, as it isn’t raining. That, for London, is almost variety enough. Now, if you made up your mind to go on the wildest spree you could think of, what would it be? A French ball, with a hump and a limp; or a day on the Thames, if it happened to be summer, all alone with one man in a punt?”
“Let me think.” Julia had quite fallen in with his mood. “I think I’d go on a sort of platonic honeymoon with the most companionable man I knew—you, for instance—to some foreign town, one I’d never visited, and where we could hear the best music. There would be a certain excitement in avoiding English people lest they misinterpret what was eminently proper, if quite irregular.”
“I could never have conceived of such a hilarious program. But if that is your best, it would be better than nothing. As it is winter, I suppose we would shiver over our respective radiators when not at the opera.”
“Oh, there are always the museums and art galleries —”
“More and more intoxicating. My idea of complete happiness is to wear out my old shoes and the back of my neck in art galleries —”
“As it is winter, think of the exercise.”
“I prefer using a pair of dumb-bells at an open window. Do you happen to know of any musical European town where we could get food fit to eat?”
“Oh, there is always some good restaurant, and of course we could dine together —”
“And breakfast, and lunch, or I don’t go. Of course you’ll send me to a different hotel. Shall you take a sitting-room —”
“Oh, that wouldn’t do at all. Besides, it wouldn’t be necessary. We’ll be out all the time. There are always the theatres at night, when we don’t go to the opera.”
“As I don’t understand a word of any language except my own and Spanish, I can slumber peacefully while you improve your mind and feel wicked. I don’t see where I come in on this game.”
“Joking aside, Ishbel and Dark are going to Munich next week, and we might go along. My mind is a bit relaxed since the arrival of your upsetting self. It might be well to humor it.”
“Ah!” Tay had frowned, but his brow cleared suddenly. After all, he might see more of the real Julia with a chaperon, than if she were tormented by recurring alarms. “Very well. Munich, by all means. Anything to cut you loose from Suffrage. Promise right here that you will chuck it until we return.”
“I shall try to forget it—if only that I may return to it with a mind completely refreshed.”
“Exactly. But I haven’t yet had an object lesson in your switching-off trick, so I’ll strike a bargain with you right here: if you mention Suffrage, I shall make love to you. If you don’t, I won’t.”
“I promise,” said Julia, hastily. “I really should like to feel quite young and frivolous for a bit. And love is as deadly serious as Suffrage.”
“So you will find when I get ready to make love to you.”
“Can you get away—I thought you were so busy?”
“I’ll get away, all right. Just as well to jar their calm deliberation by flaunting my scornful indifference. Here we are. We’ll meet to-morrow night.”
And they parted gayly at the gates of Clement’s Inn.
VII
As Ishbel had promised, it was but a family party at her house on the following evening, and after dinner, the men went to the billiard room, the women upstairs. Julia was to stay overnight, and after she and Ishbel had made themselves comfortable in negligées, they met in the boudoir for a talk. Bridgit was striding up and down as they entered, her hands clasped behind her. As they dropped into easy chairs, she took up her stand before the fire-screen.
“Julia,” she said fiercely, “you are going to fall in love with that man.”
“I am in love with him,” said Julia, coolly, lighting a cigarette.
“Good!” said Ishbel. “It is high time.”
“High time!” cried Mrs. Maundrell. “You could fall in love and I could fall in love, and no damage done. We have married Englishmen and gone straight ahead with our work. But not only is Julia the leader of a great party which demands her undivided allegiance, but this man is an American.”
“Perhaps he would live over here,” suggested Ishbel, who was normally hopeful. “He is far more sympathetic with our cause than Eric.”
“Not he. He is more American than the Americans—perhaps because he is a Californian. He told me all about his fight for reform in San Francisco—never heard anything so exciting—and he’s going to try it again after they’ve had another dose of corruption under the present mayor. Besides, there’s going to be a big fight this year to put in a reform governor, and he means to take part in it. He’ll never desert. It will be Julia —”
“Don’t excite yourself,” murmured Julia. “I didn’t say I meant to marry him.”
“But why not?” asked Ishbel. “We are sure to win this year, and then you will have done your great work. We should always need you, of course, but it will be mainly educational work for a long time, and the others can do that. It will be ages before women get into a Cabinet or even into Parliament. And—splendid idea—you could drill the American women, become the leader over there. With your experience and reputation you would be simply invaluable to them.”
“Suppose we don’t win this year?” asked Julia, languidly.
“We won’t!” said Mrs. Maundrell, emphatically. “They’re merely hedging. There’s nothing for us but to fight the Liberals at every general election until we get the Conservatives in.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Ishbel, who, like many of the women, was certain of victory in that year of 1910 which was to bring their “Black Friday.” “The Government may hate us, but they have given ample proof that they fear us; they know it is time to make friends of us. They will consent to the enfranchisement of only a limited number, of course, but I wouldn’t care if they only enfranchised the wives of Cabinet ministers. Let them make the fatal admission that woman has a political and legal existence and the rest is only a matter of time.”
“Yes, and nobody knows that better than themselves. They may be brutes, but they are not fools. I don’t hope for it—perhaps not even from the Conservatives—until fully four-fifths of the wives of this country have risen and devilled the lives out of their husbands. And the average British female is about as easy to wake up as a stuffed hippopotamus. She merely protrudes her front teeth and says, ‘How very odd!’ No, Julia can’t leave us. Fatal gift, that of leadership. Must take the consequences, old girl.”
“Who said I wouldn’t? Women have fallen in love without marrying before this. I intend to remain in love for a fortnight longer. Then I shall forget it and return to work.”
“Yes, if you can. I fought, fought like the devil. Didn’t I confide in you? Didn’t I look like the last rose? You are strong, but so am I. Let me tell you that love is a disease —”
“Quite so. There you have it. Love is a disease—of the subconscious or instinctive mind. It is a profound auto-suggestion, induced, in the region where the primal instincts dwell, by the superior suggestive power of some one else, and can be treated mentally like any disease of the body.”
Bridgit flung herself on the floor and clasped her knees. “How diabolically interesting! Tell us how you do it.”
Ishbel smiled and lit another cigarette.
“I may not be able to do it myself. Love, like sleep, the circulation of the blood, the digestive apparatus, to say nothing of drug and drink habits, is controlled by the subconscious mind. We can unwittingly give ourselves suggestions, but not deliberately. But all mental diseases, short of insanity, can be cured by counter-suggestions, administered by an expert. If I found that my will was helpless before intermittent attacks of love fever, and all that horrible accompaniment of longing and aching we read about, to say nothing of confusion of mind which unfits one for work, I should go to Paris and put myself in the hands of an eminent psychotherapeutist I know of. He would throw me into a semicataleptic state, or hypnotic, if I were not amenable in the other, and give me counter-suggestions until I was as completely cured as if I merely had had an attack of insomnia, or had taken a drug until it had weakened my will.”
“How beautifully simple! Why didn’t you tell me when I was in the throes, and doubtful of its being for the best?”
“I didn’t think of it. It only occurred to me when I was beginning to feel—perplexed. Now, as I really need a rest, and can take it in this interval of peace, I am going to see what the preliminary surrenders are like, and enjoy them. That much I owe to myself. And I shall not have its memory destroyed, neither.”
“No, don’t,” said Ishbel. “Merely have it put in cold storage. Suspended animation. You might be able to marry Mr. Tay, after all. It would be a pity to lose it altogether. Should you have to fall in love all over again, or should you go back to your psychowhatyoucallhim and have the original suggestions replanted? Will he keep them in alcohol in a glass jar like those things in the Sorbonne?”
“You can jest, my dear, but I am talking pure science. And I learned it at the fountainhead. The Anglo-Saxon world is slow to accept anything it thinks new, but suggestive therapeutics were practised two thousand years B.C.”
“No one could be less conservative than I, although I have an adorable husband and two babies. Some day that may be thought radical. My mind is hospitable to all your lore, but I want to hear you work it out to its logical conclusion. What shall you do if you suddenly find yourself free to marry Mr. Tay—delightful man!—before he, with or without the aid of psychos, has recovered from you?”
“I have other reasons for intending to marry no man. And as for Dan—he is not even sure he is in love with me —”
“Oh, isn’t he?” cried Bridgit and Ishbel in chorus.
“Well, granted he is; he was not when he came over. He was convinced that I had grown hard and masculine, altogether terrifying; he was quite over his boyish infatuation. Now, he is attracted because he is delighted to find me not so much changed outwardly from his old ideal, and much more interesting to talk to. Besides, his masculinity is alert at the prospect of a difficult hunt. But when he is once more on the other side of the world, he will recover.”
“Julia,” said Ishbel, “you haven’t studied that man’s jaw-bones. And he has had his own way too much. He is tenacious. Now, as you are a human woman, you will adopt my suggestion. You will take him with you to Paris, and persuade him to go in for alternate treatments. Sauce for the goose, etc.”
“No,” said Julia, frowning.
“Julia!” said Ishbel, severely. “Are you losing your sense of humor?”
“Of course not!” Julia sprang to her feet. “But, you see, all this is A B C to me; and as it’s merely funny to you, you think there must be an air pocket in my mind into which my sense of humor has dropped —”
“No, dear, not a bit of it. We all know that you learned more in the East than you’ll ever tell, and we’ve heard vague rumors of Charcot —”
“Oh, his hypnotism is all out of date. The present men are as scientific as the ancients —”
“Well, don’t be too hard on us, Julia, and pity Mr. Tay. Take him with you to Paris. I mean it. It’s the least you can do.”
“I’ll not.”
“And why not, dear?”
“Oh, you see,” said Julia, “the unexpected might happen, and I might want to marry him. And when men recover, they recover so completely; not to say console themselves with some one else. I shall have the suggestion made, that if I ever should—but I’m not going to say another word about it. Good night.” And she ran out of the room.
“I don’t doubt she could do all that,” said Ishbel, as Bridgit gathered herself up. “But one thing I am positive of, and that is that she won’t.”
“I rather hope she will. Then we can have a private conference with the psycho and tell him to plant the haunting image of Nigel in the place of Tay, dispossessed. Then we’ll all be happy.”
“Do you believe Nigel cares still for Julia?”
“Don’t I? But he’s strong, if you like. He can’t marry her in England, so he thinks of her as little as possible and does the work of two men.”
“But if he can’t marry her?”
“I’ll tell you something if you’ll vow not to tell Julia—or Mr. Tay.”
“Very well.”
“France has been having bad heart attacks. I have it from Aunt Peg.”
“Julia is as likely to hear it from the same source.”
“Not she. The duke has forgiven her, but has no desire to be reminded that he has a suffragette in the family. Never reads the Militant news, and all the rest of it. So Julia spares his feelings and never goes there. (I spare him the sight of me!) I don’t want her to know it until Mr. Tay is safely at home in his absorbing San Francisco. It would never do, Ishbel. I’d like to see Julia happy myself, but she can’t leave England. And she’d be happier with Nigel, for he’s her own sort. I like Mr. Tay; he’s really frightfully attractive—but—after Part I of love-plus-matrimony had run its course, they’d have a bad time adapting themselves. The real tyrants are the masterful Americans, because in their heart of hearts they regard women as children, handle them subtly, won’t fight in the open. Now remember, you’ve promised. If Mr. Tay found out that France was likely to die any minute, he’d ‘camp’ here, as he expresses it, until he could marry Julia out of hand. He has a jaw, as you’ve observed yourself.”
“Yes,” said Ishbel. “I’ve promised, but I rather wish I hadn’t. I like fair play.”
“We are in war,” said Mrs. Maundrell, coolly. “Good night.”
VIII
“Julia!” came Tay’s voice over the telephone. “We are in adjoining hotels! I never felt so truly wicked in my life! How do you feel?”
“Cold. My stove won’t warm up.”
“Mine looks like a polar bear on end. I expect it to open its jaws and devour me. Wish it would if what you English chastely call its inside is warmer than its out. I’ve just had an exhilarating supper of cold ham, beer, and double-barrelled crusts, which appear to be a staple. I suppose you have had precisely the same, as this is Germany and the hour 11.30 P.M.”
“Yes, and I’m going to bed this minute and forget it. Good night.”
“One minute. To-morrow morning?”
“Hadn’t we better wait till the Darks arrive?”
“Not much! Do you think I’m going to moon about a strange town by my lonesome? If we could travel together —”
“There are so many English people in Munich, and I am in the position of Cæsar’s wife at present —”
“Don’t dare to mention the word—the fatal word. Now, expect me to-morrow morning at nine-thirty. If you are not downstairs on the minute, I’ll send a procession of bell-boys up to your room until the hotel is ringing with the scandal.”
“Very well. It would be rather stupid.”
“Glad you see the point. By the way, what have you told the police you are? I longed to write anarchist and see what would happen. I compromised by writing, ‘Proprietor of a Free Lunch Counter and Antigraft Sausage Factory.’ ”
“You didn’t!”
“Cross my heart.”
“I hope you’ll have a visit from the police first thing in the morning. I wrote ‘Ward in Chancery’; thought that rather funny.”
“Best English joke I ever heard! Well, go to bed, Princess of the Tower. Mind you stay on it.”
Lord Dark had been detained at the last minute, and Julia easily had been persuaded to go on alone with Tay. Both had made merry at first over the mock elopement; but the trains were crowded and cold, the wait at Cologne was long and colder still, and both were unsentimentally relieved to arrive at their destination. Here, at least, in the beautiful city of Munich, they really could enjoy a day or two of complete liberty. Julia had not had the faintest notion of secluding herself.
On the following morning as Tay left his hotel he saw her waiting in front of her own. As she smiled and waved her hand he experienced a slight agreeable shock. “Aha!” he thought. “I really believe she has switched off. For all mercies, etc.”
Julia’s eyes were dancing with anticipation, the firm lines of her mouth had relaxed, and it looked even younger than when he first met her, for then it had curved with some of that bitterness of youth which she had long since outgrown; although it had been replaced first by a cynical humor and then by pride and determination. This morning she was smiling almost as she may have smiled through her first party at Government House. And she was looking remarkably pretty in her forest-green tweed, and the sable toque and stole she had taken from their long storage.
“Did you ever feel such air?” she cried. “After the heavy dampness of London, it goes to one’s head. I can almost see the Alps, as well as feel them.”
“It’s positively immoral, this climate,” said Tay, shaking her hand vigorously. “How do people ever sleep here? Now I know why they drink so much beer—to keep their feet on the earth.”
“We’ll walk miles and miles.”
“So we will. Sorry I couldn’t keep my engagement with you for breakfast, but they fairly shoved that frugal meal into my bed. When we have walked a few hours, we’ll drop in somewhere and eat veal sausages and drink chocolate. That, I am told, is the proper stunt about eleven o’clock. Certainly in this climate one could digest the maternal cow between meals.”
They had been walking briskly, but paused at the Maximilianplatz. The closely planted trees and shrubs of the long narrow park were covered with ice and glittered blindingly in the bright winter sunshine. Even the tall houses on the further sides of the streets that enclosed it had icicles depending from the windows, glittering with the prismatic hues. Overhead soft thick masses of cloud hung below the deep rich blue of the sky. People were hurrying along in their furs, the shop-windows were full of color. A royal carriage passed, as blue as the sky, and an old man saluted his loyal subjects.
Tay whistled.
“Lucky for you it’s so hard to get married in a foreign town, or my promises might go up in smoke. This is just the place for a honeymoon.”
“Isn’t it? Let’s imagine we are just married and doing Europe for the first time.”
“You can do the imagining,” said Tay, dryly. “My imagination will take a well-earned rest for the present. We’ll return to Munich later.”
They wandered about the narrow crooked shopping district for a time, then up the wide Ludwigstrasse, almost deserted at this hour.
“Good clean street,” said Tay, approvingly. “And I like these flat brown old palaces. They look like Italy without suggesting daggers and poison.”
Julia didn’t answer, and Tay looked at her curiously. Her head was thrown back, her mouth half open, as if inhaling the crystal air. There was a faint pink flush in her white cheeks, and her lips were scarlet. Her shining happy eyes were moving restlessly, as if to take in all points of the beautiful street at once. Tay was about to ask her a question that had been in his mind since they started, when she caught him suddenly by the arm.
“Look!” she exclaimed. “Do you see that party there across the street? They have skates! I remember now, Ishbel said there was fine skating in the park. Oh, how I should love to skate once more!”
“Then skate!” cried Tay. “We’ll follow them.”
“But of course you don’t. There is no ice in California.”
“But of course I do. You forget I spent four winters in New England. Let me tell you, I didn’t miss a trick.”
“Do you fancy we can hire skates?”
“I fancy we’ll skate if you want to. Come along. We mustn’t let them out of our sight.”
They followed the group of girls and boys into the Englischer Garten, a vast and glittering expanse of ice-laden trees. The lake was already well covered with skaters, young people for the most part, as it was Saturday, wearing worsted sweaters, scarves, and mitts, and all looking very red, very ugly, and very happy in a stolid deliberate way. Tay found skates without difficulty, and after a few minutes’ uncertain practice, they skimmed smoothly over the surface.
“I wish we had it to ourselves,” said Tay, discontentedly. “If it were not for these unromantic mortals, we could imagine we were in a sort of polar fairy land. I’ve seen the ice-storm in New England but never on such a scale. We are quite in the middle of a frozen wood.”
“If the people of Munich were as artistic about themselves as they are about their city, they would all dress in white for skating. Then what a sight it would be! But at least they look happy.”
“So do you.”
“I am, oh, I am!”
“May I ask if it is because you have the rare privilege of a day in my exclusive society?”
“Partly that. But not all. Can you make curves? I never shall forget my delight when I skated for the first time—after being brought up in the tropics! Fancy!”
“Perhaps it didn’t take so much to make you happy in those days.”
“Oh, far more! Far, far more! I have been really happy since then.”
“If you don’t mind what you call it.”
“Where do you suppose the swans go in winter?”
“Haven’t an idea, and care less. Look out!”
They almost collided with a large corsetless lady in a white sweater, a red woollen scarf tied round her purple face, and a gray skirt exhibiting massive pedestals. She glared at the fashionable intruders, but described a curve of surprising agility, although as she propelled herself to the other side of the lake she gave the impression of waddling.
Julia snatched her hand from Tay’s and shot after the expansive back. “Catch me!” she cried. And for the next twenty minutes Tay pursued her, sometimes almost heading her off, sometimes almost grasping her waving hand, only to find her flying to the other end of the lake. She looked like an elf, with her green dress and golden hair, and was not for a moment lost sight of in the undistinguished throng. Tay, whose blood was up, chased her until he finally brought her to bay, when she threw herself down on the bank and held out her skates to be unbuckled.
“Good symbol,” said Tay, as he knelt before her, “I’ll catch you every time, my lady. Don’t ever try running away, or you’ll merely get tired for nothing.”
“I’m the better skater!”
“You are. But I’m a good sprinter. Do you want to race me?”
“Rather!”
He delivered up the skates, and when they reached a straight expanse of road, they drew a long breath, hunched their shoulders, and started on a dead run.
To Tay’s surprise she kept abreast of him for nearly fifty yards, making up for what she lacked in length of limb with a fleetness of foot that gave her the effect of a bird in full flight. Then he shot past her, and came back to find her panting, but with dancing eyes.
“I am so hungry!” she cried. “Is it time for sausages and chocolate?”
“It’s time for lunch, or whatever they call it here. Do you suppose we can find a cab? Much as I dote on exercise I think a cab after coffee and rolls some three hours agone would suit me.”
“Where shall we lunch?”
“I’ll sample your hotel, if you don’t mind, and you will dine with me.”
“And afterward we must go to one of the big cafés for coffee. That is the proper thing.”
“You shall have your way in trifles so long as I have beaten you twice.”
They found a cab near one of the gates of the park, and drove as rapidly to the hotel as the fat driver and lean horse could be persuaded to go, and both too hungry for further nonsense. They had an admirable luncheon, in spite of the fact that it was not the “high season,” and then were directed to the Café Luitpold for their coffee. It was full of students, the “trees” covered with their caps of every color, and the atmosphere dense with smoke. They found a table in an alcove, and Julia lit a cigarette with the agreeable sensation of having come at last to the real Bohemia.
“Now,” said Tay, “I’ve got you where you can’t escape, and there are no English people to overhear. I propose to know what you think you are this morning. You are playing some sort of a part, and a charming enough part it is, but for complete enjoyment I must be on. I only half understand. Out with it.”
Julia leaned her head against the wall and smiled.
“I don’t mind telling you in the least. I am just eighteen, and I have just arrived from Nevis. I never had time to be really young, you know. So here is my opportunity.”
“You look the rôle, but how—well, you are young enough in any case; but how do you manage to relight the eighteen candles? You’ve lived some since then. I couldn’t do it!”
Julia smiled mysteriously. “We never really exhaust any phase, particularly of youth. It is merely stowed away waiting for the current. Mine leaped up at the first signal. You appeared with the battery, and presto!”
“You suppressed it mighty well for quite two weeks.”
“Oh, I could have buried it deeper still, but I didn’t choose to. I deliberately shook it out of its cave where it was comfortably hibernating, and put all the rest in its place.”
“Why didn’t you do it before? I can’t be the first young and ardent admirer you have met. You are thirty-four—you have been free eight years—it is incredible. Is it merely the first good chance you have had? I don’t know whether I like being your stalking horse or not.”
Julia leaned her elbows on the table and looked him straight in the eyes.
“That has something to do with it, but not all. If you had come a year earlier, when I couldn’t have left for a minute, it would have been different, of course. But there was this sudden lull, and, you see, I am frightfully in love.”
The shot was so unexpected that Tay turned white, then the red rushed to his face. He had been lounging. He sat up stiffly and leaned forward.
“Julia!” he said. “Be careful. I shan’t stand for any flirting.”
“Oh, I’m much too young to flirt—I mean I hadn’t heard the word when I left Nevis. Of course I’m in love with you—fancy I have been for years. I don’t mind in the least if you no longer are in love with me.”
“I’m in love all right, but I’d like mighty well to know which of the several Julias you’ve treated me to I’m in love with.”
“Don’t you like this one?”
“I’d like nothing better than to know that you really were eighteen and that I could teach you all you would ever know.”
“You’ll teach me all I’ll ever know about love.”
“Ah!”
“The past is a blank as far as I am concerned. I can wipe anything off the slate.”
“I don’t know—I don’t know— Charming as you are now, I found you enchanting fifteen years ago, and quite as fascinating in another way when we met again. I don’t think I want the other Julias obliterated.”
“But you can stand this one for a week?”
“I’ll ask for nothing better—for a week. But—somehow—you look almost too young to know what love is. You look like a child pretending.”
“I am and I’m not. I can’t annihilate the years, but I can send them to the rear, and put youth, and all that means when it has its rights, in front—and keep it there as long as I choose.”
Tay stirred uneasily. “I’ve seen women of thirty—forty—in love before this, and they always look rejuvenated—but—well, I wish you had never lived those years in the Orient. You’ve got yourself too well in hand. It’s uncanny.”
“Oh, if you prefer me as the general of a Militant army,” and she drew herself up, her features arranged themselves in an expression of stern composure, her eyes were steady and exalted, and her mouth subtly older.
“Drop it!” said Tay, savagely. “Drop it! That at least you are to cut out for good and all. I’m quite content with you as you are—” Julia’s face was relaxed and smiling once more. “It is enough to know your possibilities. Remain as you are until you have developed under my tuition; and forget your Oriental learning also.”
“That is just the one thing I never would part with. Without it I should be no match for you.”
“Tell me one thing right here. Do you fancy yourself something more than mere woman? I mean did those old wiseacres in the East convince you that you were a soul reincarnated for a purpose, even before they taught you too much of their psychic lore? I don’t know whether I like the idea or not. Living with a reincarnated immortal soul several hundred million years old, developed that much beyond ordinary women, might not be all that a mortal man desires. How in creation could I ever live up to you?”
“Don’t look so far ahead. Do I look like anything but a very mortal woman at the present moment?”
“You look so adorable that if there were a little more smoke in this room I should kiss you. But—you little devil!—you have chosen the most public place in Munich to tell me all this, and you waited until you got out of England, where I did have a chance to see you alone —”
“Of course. Love-making would spoil it all. Nothing can ever be as enchanting as just being in love and asking for no more.”
“Can’t it? Well, you can have your little comedy here, and I’ll take matters in my own hands when we get back. You’ve got things all your own way now—hang it! hang it!”
“Can’t you, too, feel young and irresponsible? You really would be happy, and make me happy. And it would be something to remember!”
“I feel more like going out and getting drunk. However—have your own way. I’ll play up —”
“No, feel.”
“No doubt I shall. Your utter youth was contagious enough this morning. I’ve got some will myself. But say it again— Is it possible that you really love me?”
“Yes, I do,” said Julia, softly. “Never let that worry you.”
IX
They spent the following day wandering with the crowds that fill the Munich streets on bright Sundays, and the Darks arrived at midnight. The next morning they all went to the lake, this time finding a very different class of skaters in possession. Munich has a small fashionable set whose members dress as fashionable people do everywhere. To-day, the women in their short cloth or tweed frocks and rich furs, their faces rosy with cold and exercise, enhanced the glittering beauty of the landscape; and the young officers were quite as decorative.
“Some class,” said Tay. “In Europe there’s no choice between the aristocrats and the peasants. In my country, now, you couldn’t take your oath that all these birds of paradise weren’t clever shop-girls, until you got close enough to take notes. But here even a snub-nosed baroness, dressed like a housekeeper, shows her class.”
“That’s about all we’ve got left,” said Dark. “You helped yourself to a sort of ready-made imitation of it, as you did to everything else it took us twenty centuries to grind out. Think you might be generous and give us a little hustle in return. Can I help you, Mrs. France?”
He buckled on her skates and they joined the throng on the ice, Tay following with Ishbel. Lord Dark, something in the fashion of his wife, was a man of almost romantic appearance covering a practical character and a keen alert brain. He was as pure a Saxon in type as still persists, with fair hair and moustache, straight proud features, and languid blue eyes in thick brown frames. His tall figure was lean and sinewy, but carried listlessly. Thrown on his own resources, he would not have been driven on to the stage, out to South Africa, or become a vague “something in the City”; he would deliberately have applied himself to the science of money-making and mastered it, his ends accelerated by his indolent manner, so tempting to sharpers. Having inherited a considerable fortune, he was content with a career on the turf. His racing stud was notable, and rarely a year passed without adding to its reputation. He also amused himself with politics and society. Devoted to Ishbel for years before he could marry her, he was now as completely happy as a man may be whose wife is giving a large part of her energies to a cause of which he fastidiously disapproves. Broadminded, he was quite willing that all women outside of his particular circle should vote, but wished that his ancestors had settled the question and spared his generation. Astute in all things, however, he not only gave his wife her head up to a certain point, but of late had done what he could to help rush the thing through and have done with it. Ishbel, like Julia, was pledged to ignore the detested subject during this brief vacation.
“Jolly place, Munich,” he observed. “We always come here in August for the Wagnerfeste. You see all Europe as well as hear good music in comfort, which is more than you could ever say of Baireuth. We’ve never been here in winter before. Have you read up a bit? There ought to be good winter sports in the mountains.”
“Rather. I don’t fancy Mr. Tay was here an hour before he discovered there was tobogganing (rodelling) and skiing at Partenkirchen. He’s talked of little else.”
“Good! Then we’ll be really happy for a week.”
Meanwhile Ishbel was gently extracting a declaration of Tay’s intentions toward Julia by the diplomatic method of assuming all.
“It is too dreadful that you will take Julia from us,” she said plaintively. “Couldn’t you live in London?”
“Not yet.” Tay turned upon her a face of almost boyish delight. “But if she’ll really have me, we could come over every summer. Do you think she will?”
“In the end, of course. I’ve known Julia for sixteen years, and waited for her to fall in love. She never does anything by halves. But she may think she can’t leave England yet.”
“I wish these women didn’t take themselves so seriously,” said Tay, viciously. “One would think the fate of England depended on them.”
Ishbel laughed. “How like Eric! But we are used to the sixteenth century masculine attitude. It wouldn’t matter so much about me, except that every one of us helps to swell the total, but Julia is a great leader, with a wonderful power of attracting attention, making recruits, and inspiring her followers. We couldn’t spare her if the fight was to go on, but if it is won this year—well, I have told her to go and leave the rest to the other women in command.”
“Oh, you have! Bully for you! What did she say?”
“She wouldn’t commit herself. If I were you, I’d simply marry her.”
“So I shall, if I’m convinced she really cares for me.”
“You don’t doubt it?”
“I don’t know. She’s a puzzle to me. Sometimes I think she’s the most natural being on earth, and at others—well—the so-called complex women aren’t in it.”
“She’s both, but none the less interesting.”
“Oh, she’s interesting, all right. But she’s become such an adept at bluffing herself that I doubt if she always knows just where she’s at. Just now she’s bluffed—or hypnotized?—herself into thinking she’s interested in me. But I have an idea she could switch off in the opposite direction as easily.”
“Julia is a bit odd,” admitted Ishbel. “Especially since she came back from the East. Even before she went, she wasn’t much like anybody else, owing, no doubt, to that strange old mother of hers; but au fond she’s the most loyal and sincere of mortals. And it takes matrimony—a love-match—to clear a woman’s brain of cobwebs. Marry Julia and take her to the young world, and I’ll venture to say she’ll forget all she learned in the East, and a good part of her inheritance. Then she’ll be the most charming of women.”
“That’s the way I talk to myself when I’m not in the dumps. But do you really want her to marry an American? It would be more like you to want to keep her over here.”
“I did once plot and scheme to make her marry a very dear friend of us all, Lord Haverfield—Nigel Herbert—you must have read his books.”
“Ah!”
“That was rather imprudent of me. But it’s all over long ago. Julia never cared for him, and I have always said that when she did care for any man, I’d turn match-maker in earnest and do all I could to help him marry her—that is, if I liked him—and we’re all quite in love with you.” She flashed the sweetness of her charming countenance on him, and he thought her almost as beautiful as Julia. “I want her to be happy, for she was once terribly unhappy. Her experience was truly awful —”
“I never want to think of it,” said Tay, hastily. “I refuse to remember that she has ever been married. Look at here—will you promise to be on my side if she goes off on one of her tangents?”
“I will!” and she gave his hand a little shake. She longed to tell him that France might die any minute, but she had once more given her word to Bridgit, and could only hope that France would take himself off before Tay left England. “But if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll get round it somehow,” she thought.
A moment later a rapid change of partners was effected, Tay threw his arm lightly round Julia’s waist, and they waltzed down the lake to the amazement of the less agile Germans.
“Suppose you look up,” said Tay. “If you’re blushing because I have my arm round you for the first time, I’d like to see it.”
Julia laughed and threw back her head. She was blushing, and her eyes sparkled. “I’ll admit I never felt so happy in my life.”
“Are you as much in love with me as you were two days ago?” he asked dryly.
“Oh—rather more, I think.”
“If you like the sensation of my arm round you at a temperature of ten above zero, in full view of all Munich, can you imagine the ineffable happiness of being kissed by me in the vicinity of one of those tiled stoves with the door shut?”
“Then if all these people should suddenly disappear, you wouldn’t care to kiss me in the midst of this enchanted wood?”
“I’d kiss you wherever I got a chance, and what’s more I’ll do it. So prepare yourself.”
“Your promise!”
“Promise nothing. I absolve myself right here. And you talk Suffrage if you can!”
“Alas, I don’t want to. But I shan’t let you make love to me.”
“Oh, yes, you will,—when and where I please.”
Julia looked a little frightened. “Oh, no—we mustn’t go that far —”
“You merely want to flirt and make me miserable? Well, I’ve had just as much of that as I propose to stand. You’re laying up a frightful retribution, my lady.” He tightened his clasp and drew her as close as the skates would permit. “Be consistent,” he whispered. “You are eighteen. You remember nothing. We are really engaged, you know. You are mine this week. We have four days more. Put that imagination of yours to some good use. Believe that we are to be married this day fortnight.”
“If I go too far—you would never forgive me.”
He laughed grimly. “If you go that far, you’ll go farther. Of course I understand you. It’s a proof of the adorable innocence you have managed to preserve that you don’t know what playing with fire means to the man. You propose to abandon yourself discreetly, get a certain excitement out of words and coquetry while we’re here safely chaperoned, and then throw me down hard in the cause of duty when we return to London. Well, that’s not my program. Now, we’ll say no more about it.”
They climbed up the interior of the great statue Bavaria, in the afternoon, to gaze at the tumbled peaks of the Alps glittering through the haze that promised fine weather. Then the women rested for the opera of the evening, and Tay and Dark smoked in one of the cafés, talked horse and business, and, incidentally, drifted into a friendship that was to lead to strange results. Dark had influential friends in the City and promised Tay his immediate assistance in bringing his prospective partners to terms. Tay, who liked sport as well as most American men, although he had little time to devote to it, forgot that he was in love while “swapping” stories of the race-track. Both, secretly despising the other’s nationality, discovered that when men are men they are pretty much the same the world over. They cemented the bond by cursing Suffrage with all the epithets, profane, picturesque, savage, and humorous, in their respective vocabularies, and left the café arm in arm, feeling that they had talked woman back into her proper sphere and that all was well with the world.
X
Those were the last days of the Munich Opera-house in all its glory. Mottl, prince of conductors, was alive; Fay, Preuse-Matzenauer, Bosetti, Bender, Feinhals, the incomparable Fassbender, sang every week, and, now and again, Knote and Morena. To-day death and disaster have overtaken that great company, and few are left to make the pilgrimage to Munich worth while.
“Die Walküre” was given on Monday night, and included nearly all of the staff. The hotel portier had reserved seats for the English party in the first row of the balkon, and they had a full view of a typical Wagnerian audience. In these days, owing no doubt to the American residents, the entire auditorium, as well as the balkon and loges, was well dressed. No more did the hausfrau come in her street costume of serviceable stuff turned in at the neck with a bit of tulle, but made shift to wear a demitoilette of sorts, and light in color even if of mean material. The fashionable Müncheners outdressed the Americans and occupied the first row of the balkon and the loges. Even the royalties presented a far better appearance than in the old days, and the large number of officers present alone would have given the house a brilliant appearance. The upper tiers were picturesque with the girl students in their Secessionist costumes and bazaar heads, the men with their untidy hair and flowing ties. But the crowning grace of the “Hof” at all times is that no one is allowed to enter after the overture begins, nor dares to speak until the curtain goes down.
Julia had carefully arrayed herself in her most becoming gown, a white Liberty satin under pale green chiffon, so casual in effect that it looked as if held together by the sheaf of lilies-of-the-valley on the corsage. Ishbel was resplendent in black velvet and English pink; and the party was the cynosure of the audience below, standing with its back to the stage and frankly inspecting the balkon until the last bell rang and the lights went out.
The tenor was wrenching the sword from the tree, and Fay was standing with her famous arms rigidly aloft, in one of the prescribed Wagnerian attitudes, when Tay saw Julia move restlessly, sit forward with a frown, and then sink back with an expression of sadness so profound that he longed to ask what ailed her now, but had no desire to be hissed down or put out by the fat doorkeeper. When they were in the buffet, however, during the first pause, and he had walked up two trains and nearly lost his cufflinks in a determined effort to procure ices, and they were alone at a table in a corner, he referred to the incident, if only to prove that no performance, no matter how great, could divert his attention from her.
“Oh, I was only thinking,” said Julia. “I wonder where the Darks are?”
“Engaged in a wrestling match, probably. Aren’t you always thinking? What struck you so suddenly in the middle of that alleged dramatic scene where the fat man, purple in the face, was struggling to get a tin sword out of a paper tree and trying to sing at the same time? Never was so excited in my life.”
Julia laughed. “I was sure you were not musical.”
“You insult San Francisco. We are the most musical people in America. The very newsboys whistle the opera tunes. But I like to see a decent sense of the proprieties observed. Those two could have said all they had to say in five minutes. Set to music, it should take about fifteen. However— Tell me what struck you all of a heap.”
“Oh—well—I—”
“Shoot!”
“What?”
“More slang. Fire away.”
“Do you expect to know all my thoughts?”
“I don’t, but I’d like to.”
“I wonder! However—I don’t mind telling you. It occurred to me rather forcibly how much simpler women’s problems were in those days. Two young people, isolated from the world, meet and spontaneously fall in love. They are creatures of instinct, and ignorant of any law except Might. A sleeping potion in the savage husband’s nightly horn settles that question, and they run away into the forest and are happy—would be happy forever more if let alone. But in these complicated days—all our obstacles are inside of us! Any one can find courage to defy the primitive and obvious —”
“Plenty of primitive people right in the midst of civilization,” interposed Tay, grimly.
“Yes, I know, and in your country divorce is easy. But for the highly civilized, life, even with divorce, is anything but easy. Women question that condition called happiness when it would appear to offer itself, examine it on all sides. They know men too well—life—above all, themselves. Or they have assumed impersonal duties and responsibilities. Or their brains have become so complex that love alone cannot satisfy. They would have love plus far more! If the choice must be made, they dare not cast for love, in their fear of disaster. Nothing is so dishonest as the so-called psychological novel, which leaves two thinking moderns in each other’s arms at the end of a forced situation, with their natures unchanged, all their problems—their inner problems—unsolved. They never can be solved by love, marriage, children, the good old way. The sort for whom all problems can be treated by the conventional recipe are not worth writing about. But it is a terrible proposition; for these highly civilized women have the automatic desires of their sex for love and happiness—intensified by imagination! But—they know that a greater need still is to fill their lives and use their brains.”
Tay had turned pale. “The modern man, unless he is an ass, gives his wife her head.”
“That is beside the question. The real trouble doesn’t sound particularly attractive when put into plain English: it is the raising of the ego to the nth power that makes these women want to stand alone, resent the idea of finding completion in a man.”
“Then let us pray that they will all die old maids, and their race die with them.”
“No hope! Children of the most commonplace parents are the products of their times. Heredity is modified from generation to generation. Otherwise, we should all be Siegmunds and Sieglindes. Their little brains are impregnated by forces seen and unseen. Hadji Sadrä would explain it by the theory of reincarnation, or by planetary conditions at birth—the only reasonable explanation of Shakespeare, by the way, if he wasn’t Bacon. But although, no doubt, many of the great do return to complete their work, there are not enough to go round. And there is a simpler explanation. In these vibrating days the very air is flashing and humming with secrets for those that have the magnet in their brains. Bright minds learn from life, not from their old-fashioned parents. Oh, the breed will increase, not diminish! Happiness, old style, is about done for. Women will be happier in consequence—or in another way. I don’t know about men. They have reigned too long. And then they are simple ingenuous creatures, the most tyrannical of them, and pathetically dependent upon women. Women are growing more independent every day, more indifferent to that sex ‘management’ of men, which so far has constituted a large part of man’s happiness.”
Tay was angry, therefore more jocular than ever. “Don’t forget the adaptability of even the male animal, also that man is born of woman; also brought up by her. I don’t worry one little bit about the future happiness of man. As for the Home—apartment-houses and the decline and fall of servants have about relegated it to the last stronghold of the old-fashioned love story—the country town. I said just now that I’d like to know all your thoughts. Well, I shouldn’t. My idea of happiness is a lifetime with a woman who would always be more or less of a mystery, who would have her own life—inner and outer—as I should have mine. And I’m not so sure that mine would be simple and ingenuous. Marriage with her would be a sort of intense personal partnership, with separations of irregular recurrence and length. Then, my lady, there would be a constant ache; passion would never wear itself out; and neither would be looking for novel affinities elsewhere.”
Julia smiled. “It sounds very enticing. But that isn’t the point. The subtlest enemy—it is that desire to find our highest completion alone.”
“A bully good phase for the next world. Something to look forward to. The Fool’s Paradise in this life is the grandest failure on record. Men and women are not constituted to perfect by their lonesomes. Otherwise the mutual attraction of sex would not be what it is. No woman that a man wants was ever intended to complete herself; nor can she become so highly developed in this life as not to find it quite safe to follow her instincts on her own plane.”
The second bell had rung and the buffet was nearly empty. He leaned across the table and brought his face close to hers. “If you are dead sure that I never could make you happy, that you never could love me, that you haven’t a human instinct that I could gratify, then chuck me. But if you are only psychologizing on general principles, then chuck that as fast as you can. I don’t want to hear any more of it, and I shan’t pay any more attention to it hereafter than if you were speculating about possible grandchildren inheriting a taste for drink from your brother. Switch off! You are eighteen.”
Julia sprang to her feet with a laugh, her seriousness routed. “Right you are! Come, or we’ll be locked out.”
Both Dark and Tay stolidly refused to remain for the last act, and the party went to the best of the restaurants for the supper, which was to take the place of dinner; the opera had begun at six o’clock. The meal was cooked by a chef, and they lingered over it until long after the Wagnerites were in bed. Dark and Tay were in the best of spirits, for however they might love music, they loved dinner more; Julia and Ishbel, who were disposed to be sulky, soon recovered, and the party was so gay that even the yawning waiters smiled and felt sure of recompense. When they finally left the restaurant, Munich might have been the tomb of its history. Not a cab was on the rank. Not a policeman was to be seen. When they reached the small paved square before the loggia, Dark threw his arm about Julia, and they waltzed until Tilly must have longed to step down and join them. A delighted giggle did come from the sentry-boxes before the side portals of the palace as Tay and Ishbel followed the example of their companions. It is not often that the Munich night is disturbed by anything more original than roistering students. The moon was out, the cold air crisp. They could have danced for an hour, but Ishbel suddenly reminded them that they were to start for Partenkirchen in a few hours, and they raced one another to their hotel.
XI
They spent the rest of their week at Partenkirchen, a village in a mountain valley, surrounded by a chain of glittering peaks. The village was little more than one steep street bordered by inns and shops, but there were farms in the valley and on the nearer hillsides. The natives wore high fur caps, not unlike the cossack headgear, and seemed to exist for decorative purposes only, although alive to the lure of tourist silver. The hotel at the top of the street was very modern, with a good cook, little balconies for those that would enjoy the view, and many nooks in the rooms downstairs for those that would talk unhindered if not unseen. At this season there were no other English or Americans, but a sufficient number of Europeans of the leisure class to make the dining-room brilliant at night and animated at all times.
Julia and Ishbel had provided themselves with short white skirts of thick material, white men’s sweaters, and white Tam o’ Shanters. The men couldn’t wear white, but looked their best, as men always do, in rough mountaineering costume. They climbed, skated, skied, and tobogganed; and, under Julia’s gentle manipulation, kept close together. It was natural that Tay should fall to Ishbel in their outings, and only once or twice did he manage to drag Julia’s sled up the hill, or direct her uncertain footsteps when on the snow-shoes. Then she was so excited with the new sport that she paid little attention to him. She threw herself into it with the zest of a child, and he couldn’t flatter himself that her merry laugh was forced, nor the dancing lights in her eyes. Nor was he depressed himself by any means; the tonic air went to the heads of all of them, and they enjoyed themselves with an abandon possible only to those that have seen too much of life.
But on the last day, Ishbel, who saw through Julia’s manœuvres, deliberately stayed in bed with a headache, and Dark, without warning of his intention, departed early with a guide. Tay and Julia met alone at the breakfast table.
“Now!” he said gayly. “I’ve got you. What are you going to do about it? If you shut yourself up in your room, I’ll break the door down.”
“As if I’d do anything so silly. How I wish we could stay here a month.”
“Why not?”
“I left no address, and I may have stayed too long already —”
“Sh-h!”
“You could not, either.”
“Oh, yes, I could. Dark has been pulling wires, and I’m dead sure now that the thing will go through.”
“I’m so glad! But no doubt you could have managed it by yourself sooner or later. I fancy you’ll always be a success in business.”
“Thanks. If you mean to insinuate that business and cards are in the same class, I’m not a bit discouraged.”
“Pour me out another cup of coffee. I believe American men like to wait on women.”
“It’s part of our game. You see how honest I am. You’ll marry me without illusions.”
“Shall you boss me frightfully?” Julia looked at him over her cup, and he nearly dropped his. He kept his bantering tone, however.
“The more you do for me, the more I’ll spoil you. It will be quite an exciting race. How should you like being spoiled for a change?”
“It would be glorious. So irresponsible.”
“Exactly. That’s what makes many a man get drunk. Few sensations so delightful as that of complete irresponsibility.”
“Do you get drunk?” asked Julia, in mock alarm.
“Gorgeously. Am I not a good San Franciscan? Not too often, however. Bad for business.”
“You never told me if you went on that spree when you got those ten thousand dollars. Or didn’t you get it? Perhaps you anticipated, and your father wouldn’t—what did you call it—plunk?”
“I didn’t, and he did, and I did. I whooped it up for just five days. To tell you the truth, I didn’t find as much in it as I expected, but felt I owed it to myself. Wish now I’d come over and eloped with you.”
“Ah!” Julia made a rapid mental calculation. He would have arrived at about the time Nigel was laying his last desperate siege. Poor Nigel! Julia could picture Tay’s wooing and methods. Would he have won where her more courtly knight had failed?
“Suppose I had never turned up?” asked Tay, abruptly. “That husband of yours can’t live forever, is many years older than you, anyhow. Do you fancy you would have eventually married Herbert? Corking books! He must be some man.”
Julia had flushed to her hair. “How did you know I was thinking of him?” she stammered.
“Were you? Well, those flashes happen, you know. You haven’t answered my question.”
“It is quite impossible for me to tell, even to imagine, what I might have done if you—well, if you had not come over again. I’ve never really thought of marrying Nigel, but there would be a certain rest in it—not now, but later, perhaps. And we think and work with much the same objects.”
“Nothing in rest till you’ve had the other thing first. How much thinking did you expend on that other thing before you were submerged in the unmentionable?”
Julia blushed again, then laughed. “Oh, well—some day, I’ll tell you a funny experience I had in India.”
“Tell me now.”
“Over empty coffee-cups and fragments of buttered rolls? Not I. What shall we do first? Skate?”
“If you like. Do you want to toboggan afterward?”
“I think I’d like a tramp through the woods. We’ve never really investigated them.”
“Good. Come along.”
They found the lake deserted and skated in silence until Tay remembered her promise.
“This is a sufficiently romantic spot for confidences,” he observed. “And in full view of the waiters of the hotel, who appear to have nothing to do but watch us. Tell me your Indian experience. Whom did you think you were in love with over there?”
“Nobody. That was the trouble.”
“Did he love and ride away, perhaps? That’s just the sort of experience you need.”
“Well, I’ve never had it,” said Julia, indignantly.
“A man never minds telling when he’s been left, but I doubt if a woman ever admits it even to herself. You’re weak-kneed creatures, the best of you, and need nine-tenths of all the vanity there is in the world to keep going.”
“I believe you really despise women. But you’re just the sort that couldn’t live without them.”
“Right and wrong. I shan’t explain that cryptic statement. Fire away.”
“You’ll laugh at me.”
“If I really could laugh at you, I’d be half cured. I try, but it does no good. What would be funny in another woman is tragic in you—and pathetic.”
“Ah?” She was prepared to be indignant again, but met a new expression in the eyes with which he was intently regarding her. “What do you mean by that? I am not to be pitied.”
“You poor isolated child! I’ve never felt sorrier for anybody in my life. But never mind. Tell me your Indian experience.”
“Well—one night—a warm heavenly Indian night—I was alone in a boat on a lake. There was a great marble palace at one end. The nightingales were singing in the forest; and such perfumes!”
“Gorgeous! Why wasn’t I there? Some fun, love-making in southern Asia. But this is just the setting for real enjoyment of the story. Go ahead.”
“Yes, I never could be in a sentimental mood in this temperature. Well, I was completely happy—I had been happy for nearly a year in India, enjoying its strange beauty and never wishing for a companion. It was happiness enough to be alone and free. But that night—suddenly—I felt furious —”
“Ah! I begin to catch on.”
“I wish you wouldn’t always guess what I’m going to say.”
“Shows I’m the real thing. Go on.”
“I did wish with all my soul—every part of me—that I had a lover and that he was there. Heavens, how I could have loved him! I felt abominably treated by fate. Up to that time I hadn’t even thought about love. My experience had been too dreadful. I had felt sure that all capacity for love had been withered up at the roots. When a man looked at me as men do look at women they admire very much, it was enough to make me hate him. But I suddenly realized all that had passed. I had come to the conclusion that Harold had been mad from the beginning, so I could do no less than forgive him. That seemed to wipe it all out.”
“When did this happen?” asked Tay, abruptly. “What year?”
“It must have been—in 1903.”
“Oh! Cherry hadn’t been to England for two or three years. She went that year and came back with a good deal of your story—got it from your aunt, of course. I remember I thought about you pretty hard for a time. Was on the brink of falling in love with another girl, and it all went up in smoke. What time of the year was it?”
“Late autumn.”
“Yes! I told myself it was tomfoolery. That you had forgotten me; and I had pretty well forgotten you. Nevertheless, I couldn’t get you out of my head. You believe in that sort of thing, I suppose!”
“Oh, yes. I wonder!”
They were both pale and staring at each other. “Well, go on,” said Tay. “What next?”
“I made up my mind that I would find some one to love; and take the consequences. I went down to Calcutta, and for a whole winter tried to fall in love. There were many charming men, but it was no use.”
“Now are you convinced?”
There was a bend in the lake, which Julia had artfully avoided. Tay swung her suddenly around it, and in spite of her desperate attempt to free herself, caught her in his arms.