The Bostonians, Vol. II

appreciated by painters, announced themselves in signs of large lettering to the sky. Groups of the unemployed, the children of disappointment from beyond the seas, propped themselves against the low, sunny wall of the park; and on the other side the commercial vista of the Sixth Avenue stretched away with a remarkable absence of aerial perspective.

'I must go home; good-bye,' Verena said, abruptly, to her companion.

'Go home? You won't come and dine, then?'

Verena knew people who dined at midday and others who dined in the evening, and others still who never dined at all; but she knew no one who dined at half-past three. Ransom's attachment to this idea therefore struck her as queer and infelicitous, and she supposed it betrayed the habits of Mississippi. But that couldn't make it any more acceptable to her, in spite of his looking so disappointed—with his dimly-glowing eyes—that he was heedless for the moment that the main fact connected with her return to Tenth Street was that she wished to go alone.

'I must leave you, right away,' she said. 'Please don't ask me to stay; you wouldn't if you knew how little I want to!' Her manner was different now, and her face as well, and though she smiled more than ever she had never seemed to him more serious.

'Alone, do you mean? Really I can't let you do that,' Ransom replied, extremely shocked at this sacrifice being asked of him. 'I have brought you this immense distance, I am responsible for you, and I must place you where I found you.'

'Mr. Ransom, I must, I will!' she exclaimed, in a tone he had not yet heard her use; so that, a good deal amazed, puzzled and pained, he saw that he should make a mistake if he were to insist. He had known that their expedition must end in a separation which could not be sweet, but he had counted on making some of the terms of it himself. When he expressed the hope that she would at least allow him to put her into a car, she replied that she wished no car; she wanted to walk. This image of her 'streaking off' by herself, as he figured it, did not mend the matter; but in the presence of her sudden nervous impatience he felt that here was a feminine mystery which must be allowed to take its course.

'It costs me more than you probably suspect, but I submit. Heaven guard you and bless you, Miss Tarrant!'

She turned her face away from him as if she were straining at a leash; then she rejoined, in the most unexpected manner: 'I hope very much you will get printed.'

'Get my articles published?' He stared, and broke out: 'Oh, you delightful being!'

'Good-bye,' she repeated; and now she gave him her hand. As he held it a moment, and asked her if she were really leaving the city so soon that she mightn't see him again, she answered: 'If I stay it will be at a place to which you mustn't come. They wouldn't let you see me.'

He had not intended to put that question to her; he had set himself a limit. But the limit had suddenly moved on. 'Do you mean at that house where I heard you speak?'

'I may go there for a few days.'

'If it's forbidden to me to go and see you there, why did you send me a card?'

'Because I wanted to convert you then.'

'And now you give me up?'

'No, no; I want you to remain as you are!'

She looked strange, with her more mechanical smile, as she said this, and he didn't know what idea was in her head. She had already left him, but he called after her, 'If you do stay, I will come!' She neither turned nor made an answer, and all that was left to him was to watch her till she passed out of sight. Her back, with its charming young form, seemed to repeat that last puzzle, which was almost a challenge.

For this, however, Verena Tarrant had not meant it. She wanted, in spite of the greater delay and the way Olive would wonder, to walk home, because it gave her time to think, and think again, how glad she was (really, positively, now) that Mr. Ransom was on the wrong side. If he had been on the right——! She did not finish this proposition. She found Olive waiting for her in exactly the manner she had foreseen; she turned to her, as she came in, a face sufficiently terrible. Verena instantly explained herself, related exactly what she had been doing; then went on, without giving her friend time for question or comment: 'And you—you paid your visit to Mrs. Burrage?'

'Yes, I went through that.'

'And did she press the question of my coming there?'

'Very much indeed.'

'And what did you say?'

'I said very little, but she gave me such assurances——'

'That you thought I ought to go?'

Olive was silent a moment; then she said: 'She declares they are devoted to the cause, and that New York will be at your feet.'

Verena took Miss Chancellor's shoulders in each of her hands, and gave her back, for an instant, her gaze, her silence. Then she broke out, with a kind of passion: 'I don't care for her assurances—I don't care for New York! I won't go to them—I won't—do you understand?' Suddenly her voice changed, she passed her arms round her friend and buried her face in her neck. 'Olive Chancellor, take me away, take me away!' she went on. In a moment Olive felt that she was sobbing and that the question was settled, the question she herself had debated in anguish a couple of hours before.

BOOK THIRD

XXXV

The August night had gathered by the time Basil Ransom, having finished his supper, stepped out upon the piazza of the little hotel. It was a very little hotel and of a very slight and loose construction; the tread of a tall Mississippian made the staircase groan and the windows rattle in their frames. He was very hungry when he arrived, having not had a moment, in Boston, on his way through, to eat even the frugal morsel with which he was accustomed to sustain nature between a breakfast that consisted of a cup of coffee and a dinner that consisted of a cup of tea. He had had his cup of tea now, and very bad it was, brought him by a pale, round-backed young lady, with auburn ringlets, a fancy belt, and an expression of limited tolerance for a gentleman who could not choose