She caught sight of Paula’s picture on the wall and stared at it in fascination, just as Paula had stared at the pictures of Anson’s childish sweethearts five years before. She knew something about Paula—sometimes she tortured herself with fragments of the story.
Suddenly she came close to Anson, raising her arms. They embraced. Outside the area window a soft artificial twilight already hovered, though the sun was still bright on a back roof across the way. In half an hour the room would be quite dark. The uncalculated opportunity overwhelmed them, made them both breathless, and they clung more closely. It was eminent, inevitable. Still holding one another, they raised their heads—their eyes fell together upon Paula’s picture, staring down at them from the wall.
Suddenly Anson dropped his arms, and sitting down at his desk tried the drawer with a bunch of keys.
“Like a drink?” he asked in a gruff voice.
“No, Anson.”
He poured himself half a tumbler of whiskey, swallowed it, and then opened the door into the hall.
“Come on,” he said.
Dolly hesitated.
“Anson—I’m going to the country with you tonight, after all. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Of course,” he answered brusquely.
In Dolly’s car they rode on to Long Island, closer in their emotions than they had ever been before. They knew what would happen—not with Paula’s face to remind them that something was lacking, but when they were alone in the still, hot Long Island night they did not care.
The estate in Port Washington where they were to spend the weekend belonged to a cousin of Anson’s who had married a Montana copper operator. An interminable drive began at the lodge and twisted under imported poplar saplings toward a huge, pink, Spanish house. Anson had often visited there before.
After dinner they danced at the Linx Club. About midnight Anson assured himself that his cousins would not leave before two—then he explained that Dolly was tired; he would take her home and return to the dance later. Trembling a little with excitement, they got into a borrowed car together and drove to Port Washington. As they reached the lodge he stopped and spoke to the night-watchman.
“When are you making a round, Carl?”
“Right away.”
“Then you’ll be here till everybody’s in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right. Listen: if any automobile, no matter whose it is, turns in at this gate, I want you to phone the house immediately.” He put a five-dollar bill into Carl’s hand. “Is that clear?”
“Yes, Mr. Anson.” Being of the Old World, he neither winked nor smiled. Yet Dolly sat with her face turned slightly away.
Anson had a key. Once inside he poured a drink for both of them—Dolly left hers untouched—then he ascertained definitely the location of the phone, and found that it was within easy hearing distance of their rooms, both of which were on the first floor.
Five minutes later he knocked at the door of Dolly’s room.
“Anson?” He went in, closing the door behind him. She was in bed, leaning up anxiously with elbows on the pillow; sitting beside her he took her in his arms.
“Anson, darling.”
He didn’t answer.
“Anson. … Anson! I love you. … Say you love me. Say it now—can’t you say it now? Even if you don’t mean it?”
He did not listen. Over her head he perceived that the picture of Paula was hanging here upon this wall.
He got up and went close to it. The frame gleamed faintly with thrice-reflected moonlight—within was a blurred shadow of a face that he saw he did not know. Almost sobbing, he turned around and stared with abomination at the little figure on the bed.
“This is all foolishness,” he said thickly. “I don’t know what I was thinking about. I don’t love you and you’d better wait for somebody that loves you. I don’t love you a bit, can’t you understand?”
His voice broke, and he went hurriedly out. Back in the salon he was pouring himself a drink with uneasy fingers, when the front door opened suddenly, and his cousin came in.
“Why, Anson, I hear Dolly’s sick,” she began solicitously. “I hear she’s sick. …”
“It was nothing,” he interrupted, raising his voice so that it would carry into Dolly’s room. “She was a little tired. She went to bed.”
For a long time afterward Anson believed that a protective God sometimes interfered in human affairs. But Dolly Karger, lying awake and staring at the ceiling, never again believed in anything at all.
VI
When Dolly married during the following autumn, Anson was in London on business. Like Paula’s marriage, it was sudden, but it affected him in a different way. At first he felt that it was funny, and had an inclination to laugh when he thought of it. Later it depressed him—it made him feel old.
There was something repetitive about it—why, Paula and Dolly had belonged to different generations. He had a foretaste of the sensation of a man of forty who hears that the daughter of an old flame has married. He wired congratulations and, as was not the case with Paula, they were sincere—he had never really hoped that Paula would be happy.
When he returned to New York, he was made a partner in the firm, and, as his responsibilities increased, he had less time on his hands. The refusal of a life-insurance company to issue him a policy made such an impression on him that he stopped drinking for a year, and claimed that he felt better physically, though I think he missed the convivial recounting of those Celliniesque adventures which, in his early twenties, had played such a part of his life. But he never abandoned the Yale Club. He was a figure there, a personality, and the tendency of his class, who were now seven years out of college, to drift away to more sober haunts was checked by his presence.
His day was never too full nor his mind too weary to give any sort of aid to anyone who asked it. What had been done at first
