as a girl; not now, though. Her skin had a dry, blanched look beneath the powder, her eyes were strained, the lids a little wrinkled; with surprise he realized that when she was not gay and smiling, she was not really pretty. Smart, of course, and attractive, nice figure, but not really pretty—and not young. Not like the girl he had seen strolling about the Luffs’ garden. Authentic youth there, with its irresistible and undefinable charm; just the way she had turned her head on her slender neck, the complete unconsciousness of her pose. …Queer how well he remembered that girl. …
“Shawe…” said Rosalind, standing very close to him, and speaking in the lowest possible tone. “Poor Robert. …Do remember, won’t you, that he’s not himself this morning?”
Delancey nodded in kindly reassurance, but he did not want to look at Rosalind again just then. He felt guilty, ashamed to have discerned that she was not young; he felt very sorry for her.
“For God’s sake, come on!” shouted Whitestone, in a fury.
“Temperament, eh?” said Delancey, with a smile in Rosalind’s direction, and made haste to join his friend. They went along the brick walk at a ridiculous pace; Whitestone was almost running.
“Here, now!” said Delancey, half laughing. “What’s the idea?”
“Walk a way with me,” said Whitestone. “Linney can pick us up.”
“O.K.!” said the good-matured Delancey. “May do your head good. We’ll get more shade if we—”
But Whitestone was already striding along the dusty highroad, and after a word to Linney, Delancey set out after him.
“If it’s a question of money,” he thought, “I’ve got dam’ little just now, and that’s a fact. If I can unload those Craddock shares for Josephine, she’ll give me a commission, and that’ll be something. …Thing is, Whitestone lets things get on top of him. Granted he’s short of money—and that’s no joke. But he’s got Rosalind, an ideal home life, sympathy, comradeship, all that. And talent.”
He caught up with his friend, and taking his arm, forced him to a more reasonable pace. They went on for a time in silence, the burly, ruddy, handsome Delancey, and his haggard and temperamental friend.
“See here, old man!” said Delancey, presently, troubled by the other’s blank aloofness. “What you want to do is, take things a little easier. You upset yourself, and you upset Rosalind—”
“Rosalind?” said Whitestone, turning on him suddenly. “Upset Rosalind? I was just thinking—I wish to God I could kill her.”
CHAPTER II
Delancey Accused
Delancey stopped short in the road, shocked.
“Robert…” he said, “you’re…You shouldn’t say things like that, even if you are a bit overwrought.”
“Not say it?” said Whitestone, with a smile.
And the smile frightened Delancey. Here on a public road, in the bright Spring morning, he felt a chill run down his spine.
“Is it possible…?” he thought. “I mean, these artists…High-strung, and all that…I mean, is it possible his mind’s affected?”
He glanced cautiously at his friend, but Whitestone was looking at him, still with that strange, mirthless smile.
“Look here, Robert,” he said, firmly, “you’ve got to get away—for a rest. A little trip.”
“I’m not going away,” said Whitestone. “Not when the only thing that makes life worth living is here.”
“What do you mean, Robert?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Whitestone. “I’ve got to tell you. All of it. I’ll go mad, if I don’t. I’m in love.”
“Lord!” murmured Delancey, immeasurably distressed, “That’s…Poor Rosalind. …”
“Oh, shut up!” shouted Whitestone, so loudly that Delancey glanced back, alarmed lest someone had heard him. “I know—” Whitestone went on, “that you manage pretty well not to see what you don’t want to see, but even you must have noticed. …You must have realized what a hell my life has been with that—”
He used a word that made Delancey wince.
“Robert,” he said, “you’re going to regret this. The fact that you’re temporarily infatuated with some other woman—”
“It’s not a woman,” said Whitestone. “She’s only a girl—a kid. She’s the loveliest…God! And at this moment, she’s not half a mile from me!”
“Robert, see here! She’s not by any chance the girl who’s visiting the Luffs?”
“So you did know, did you?” said Whitestone, with a short laugh. “I suppose it’s all over the place. And what the hell do I care? The first time I set eyes on her, two weeks ago, everybody could see how it was with me. And I tell you I don’t care!”
“You’ve got to care. Whether you like it or not, you’ve got to consider…your wife.”
“Come here!” said Whitestone, and taking his arm, drew him into a little glade of birches beside the road. “You’re in for it now, Shawe. You’re going to hear—everything. I’ve got to talk—and you’re the best friend I’ve got.”
Delancey would much have preferred not to hear any more, ever.
“This’ll blow over,” he thought. “I mean to say—if I can get him to go off somewhere for a while. Nerves, that’s all. …”
Things did blow over. He had learned that much from his own experience. So many things. Josephine’s tears and tempers, his own rare moods of puzzled misery—all blew over, and left the sky clear.
“I might be able to borrow enough money to send him away,” he thought. “On one of these cruises.”
Whitestone had fit a cigarette, and was smoking with deep inhalations. If he hadn’t been an artist, thought Delancey, he would have looked like a tramp, in his shirtsleeves, with that low collar. …Hadn’t shaved, either, this morning. …
“I was trapped,” Whitestone began. “I never wanted to marry her. She knew it, too. But she ‘just felt she could help me so much’…That’s the way she put it. …She led me on. …I didn’t realize where I was heading until it was too late. She managed so that everyone took it for granted we were going to be married. …I imagined myself that I must have said something—must somehow have given her to understand that I cared for her. …I was ashamed to back out of it. …She was such a damned good woman. …I felt like a brute. …So I went through with it. And as soon as the trap was sprung, I began to see.”
“But Robert…See here! You’re prejudiced now. You’re forgetting all she’s done for you.”
“No,” said Whitestone. “I haven’t forgotten anything she’s done for me—or to me. I remember it all. I lie awake at night, going over it. The first thing she did
