“Only—I always need you!” Peter, Peter!
“Not always, I think. Of course, when one is in trouble one needs a woman; but—”
“Well, of course—but—I’m generally in trouble, Harry dear.”
Frightfully ashamed of himself by that time was Peter, ashamed of his weakness. He sought to give a casual air to the speech by stooping for a neglected pin on the carpet. By the time he had stuck it in his lapel he had saved his mental forces from the rout of Harmony’s eyes.
His next speech he made to the center table, and missed a most delectable look in the aforesaid eyes.
“I didn’t come to be silly,” he said to the table. “I hate people who whine, and I’ve got into a damnable habit of being sorry for myself! It’s to laugh, isn’t it, a great, hulking carcass like me, to be—”
“Peter,” said Harmony softly, “aren’t you going to look at me?”
“I’m afraid.”
“That’s cowardice. And I’ve fixed my hair a new way. Do you like it?”
“Splendid,” said Peter to the center table.
“You didn’t look!”
The rout of Harmony’s eyes was supplemented by the rout of Harmony’s hair. Peter, goaded, got up and walked about. Harmony was half exasperated; she would have boxed Peter’s ears with a tender hand had she dared.
His hands thrust savagely in his pockets, Peter turned and faced her at last.
“First of all,” he said, “I am going back to America, Harmony. I’ve got all I can get here, all I came for—” He stopped, seeing her face. “Well, of course, that’s not true, I haven’t. But I’m going back, anyhow. You needn’t look so stricken: I haven’t lost my chance. I’ll come back sometime again and finish, when I’ve earned enough to do it.”
“You will never come back, Peter. You have spent all your money on others, and now you are going back just where you were, and—you are leaving me here alone!”
“You are alone, anyhow,” said Peter, “making your own way and getting along. And McLean will be here.”
“Are you turning me over to him?”
No reply. Peter was pacing the floor.
“Peter!”
“Yes, dear?”
“Do you remember the night in Anna’s room at the Schwartz when you proposed to me?”
No reply. Peter found another pin.
“And that night in the old lodge when you proposed to me again?”
Peter turned and looked at her, at her slender, swaying young figure, her luminous eyes, her parted, childish lips.
“Peter, I want you to—to ask me again.”
“No!”
“Why?”
“Now, listen to me, Harmony. You’re sorry for me, that’s all; I don’t want to be pitied. You stay here and work. You’ll do big things. I had a talk with the master while I was searching for you, and he says you can do anything. But he looked at me—and a sight I was with worry and fright—and he warned me off, Harmony. He says you must not marry.”
“Old pig!” said Harmony. “I will marry if I please.”
Nevertheless Peter’s refusal and the master’s speech had told somewhat. She was colder, less vibrant. Peter came to her, stood close, looking down at her.
“I’ve said a lot I didn’t mean to,” he said. “There’s only one thing I haven’t said, I oughtn’t to say it, dear. I’m not going to marry you—I won’t have such a thing on my conscience. But it doesn’t hurt a woman to know that a man loves her. I love you, dear. You’re my heaven and my earth—even my God, I’m afraid. But I will not marry you.”
“Not even if I ask you to?”
“Not even then, dear. To share my struggle—”
“I see,” slowly. “It is to be a struggle?”
“A hard fight, Harmony. I’m a pauper practically.”
“And what am I?”
“Two poverties don’t make a wealth, even of happiness,” said Peter steadily. “In the time to come, when you would think of what you might have been, it would be a thousand deaths to me, dear.”
“People have married, women have married and carried on their work, too, Peter.”
“Not your sort of women or your sort of work. And not my sort of man, Harry. I’m jealous—jealous of every one about you. It would have to be the music or me.”
“And you make the choice!” said Harmony proudly. “Very well, Peter, I shall do as you say. But I think it is a very curious sort of love.”
