“No.”
“I’m a little confused today,” said George after a minute. “People seem to have it in for me today.”
“Why, I thought”—her voice became ironic in midsentence—“I thought everybody loved you, George.”
“They don’t.”
“Only me?”
“Yes,” he said abstractedly.
“I wish it had been only me. But then, of course, you wouldn’t have been you.”
Suddenly he realized that she meant what she was saying.
“That’s just nonsense.”
“At least you’re here,” Margaret went on. “I suppose I ought to be glad of that. And I am. I most decidedly am. I’ve often thought of you sitting in that chair, just at this time when it was almost dark. I used to make up little one-act plays about what would happen then. Would you like to hear one of them? I’ll have to begin by coming over and sitting on the floor at your feet.”
Annoyed and yet spellbound, George kept trying desperately to seize upon a word or mood that would turn the subject.
“I’ve seen you sitting there so often that you don’t look a bit more real than your ghost. Except that your hat has squashed your beautiful hair down on one side and you’ve got dark circles or dirt under your eyes. You look white, too, George. Probably you were on a party last night.”
“I was. And I found your brother waiting for me when I got home.”
“He’s a good waiter, George. He’s just out of San Quentin prison, where he’s been waiting the last six years.”
“Then it was his idea?”
“We cooked it up together. I was going to China on my share.”
“Why was I the victim?”
“That seemed to make it realer. Once I thought you were going to fall in love with me five years ago.”
The bravado suddenly melted out of her voice and it was still light enough to see that her mouth was quivering.
“I’ve loved you for years,” she said—“since the first day you came West and walked into the old Realart Studio. You were so brave about people, George. Whoever it was, you walked right up to them and tore something aside as if it was in your way and began to know them. I tried to make love to you, just like the rest, but it was difficult. You drew people right up close to you and held them there, not able to move either way.”
“This is all entirely imaginary,” said George, frowning uncomfortably, “and I can’t control—”
“No, I know. You can’t control charm. It’s simply got to be used. You’ve got to keep your hand in if you have it, and go through life attaching people to you that you don’t want. I don’t blame you. If you only hadn’t kissed me the night of the Mayfair dance. I suppose it was the champagne.”
George felt as if a band which had been playing for a long time in the distance had suddenly moved up and taken a station beneath his window. He had always been conscious that things like this were going on around him. Now that he thought of it, he had always been conscious that Margaret loved him, but the faint music of these emotions in his ear had seemed to bear no relation to actual life. They were phantoms that he had conjured up out of nothing; he had never imagined their actual incarnations. At his wish they should die inconsequently away.
“You can’t imagine what it’s been like,” Margaret continued after a minute. “Things you’ve just said and forgotten, I’ve put myself asleep night after night remembering—trying to squeeze something more out of them. After that night you took me to the Mayfair other men didn’t exist for me any more. And there were others, you know—lots of them. But I’d see you walking along somewhere about the lot, looking at the ground and smiling a little, as if something very amusing had just happened to you, the way you do. And I’d pass you and you’d look up and really smile: ‘Hello, darling!’ ‘Hello, darling’ and my heart would turn over. That would happen four times a day.”
George stood up and she, too, jumped up quickly.
“Oh, I’ve bored you,” she cried softly. “I might have known I’d bore you. You want to go home. Let’s see—is there anything else? Oh, yes; you might as well have those letters.”
Taking them out of a desk, she took them to a window and identified them by a rift of lamplight.
“They’re really beautiful letters. They’d do you credit. I suppose it was pretty stupid, as you say, but it ought to teach you a lesson about—about signing things, or something.” She tore the letters small and threw them in the wastebasket: “Now go on,” she said.
“Why must I go now?”
For the third time in twenty-four hours sad and uncontrollable tears confronted him.
“Please go!” she cried angrily—“or stay if you like. I’m yours for the asking. You know it. You can have any woman you want in the world by just raising your hand. Would I amuse you?”
“Margaret—”
“Oh, go on then.” She sat down and turned her face away. “After all you’ll begin to look silly in a minute. You wouldn’t like that, would you? So get out.”
George stood there helpless, trying to put himself in her place and say something that wouldn’t be priggish, but nothing came.
He tried to force down his personal distress, his discomfort, his vague feeling of scorn, ignorant of the fact that she was watching him and understanding it all and loving the struggle in his face. Suddenly his own nerves gave way under the strain of the past twenty-four hours and he felt his eyes grow dim and his throat tighten. He shook his head helplessly. Then he turned away—still
