“Really, Mr. Braxmar,” she replied, turning on him with solemn eyes, “you mustn’t ask me to decide that now. I know how you feel. I’m afraid, though, that I may have been a little misleading in my manner. I didn’t mean to be. I’m quite sure you’d better forget your interest in me for the present anyhow. I could only make up my mind in one way if you should insist. I should have to ask you to forget me entirely. I wonder if you can see how I feel—how it hurts me to say this?”
She paused, perfectly poised, yet quite moved really, as charming a figure as one would have wished to see—part Greek, part Oriental—contemplative, calculating.
In that moment, for the first time, Braxmar realized that he was talking to someone whom he could not comprehend really. She was strangely self-contained, enigmatic, more beautiful perhaps because more remote than he had ever seen her before. In a strange flash this young American saw the isles of Greece, Cytherea, the lost Atlantis, Cyprus, and its Paphian shrine. His eyes burned with a strange, comprehending luster; his color, at first high, went pale.
“I can’t believe you don’t care for me at all, Miss Berenice,” he went on, quite strainedly. “I felt you did care about me. But here,” he added, all at once, with a real, if summoned, military force, “I won’t bother you. You do understand me. You know how I feel. I won’t change. Can’t we be friends, anyhow?”
He held out his hand, and she took it, feeling now that she was putting an end to what might have been an idyllic romance.
“Of course we can,” she said. “I hope I shall see you again soon.”
After he was gone she walked into the adjoining room and sat down in a wicker chair, putting her elbows on her knees and resting her chin in her hands. What a denouement to a thing so innocent, so charming! And now he was gone. She would not see him any more, would not want to see him—not much, anyhow. Life had sad, even ugly facts. Oh yes, yes, and she was beginning to perceive them clearly.
Some two days later, when Berenice had brooded and brooded until she could endure it no longer, she finally went to Mrs. Carter and said: “Mother, why don’t you tell me all about this Louisville matter so that I may really know? I can see something is worrying you. Can’t you trust me? I am no longer a child by any means, and I am your daughter. It may help me to straighten things out, to know what to do.”
Mrs. Carter, who had always played a game of lofty though loving motherhood, was greatly taken aback by this courageous attitude. She flushed and chilled a little; then decided to lie.
“I tell you there was nothing at all,” she declared, nervously and pettishly. “It is all an awful mistake. I wish that dreadful man could be punished severely for what he said to me. To be outraged and insulted this way before my own child!”
“Mother,” questioned Berenice, fixing her with those cool, blue eyes, “why don’t you tell me all about Louisville? You and I shouldn’t have things between us. Maybe I can help you.”
All at once Mrs. Carter, realizing that her daughter was no longer a child nor a mere social butterfly, but a woman superior, cool, sympathetic, with intuitions much deeper than her own, sank into a heavily flowered wing-chair behind her, and, seeking a small pocket-handkerchief with one hand, placed the other over her eyes and began to cry.
“I was so driven, Bevy, I didn’t know which way to turn. Colonel Gillis suggested it. I wanted to keep you and Rolfe in school and give you a chance. It isn’t true—anything that horrible man said. It wasn’t anything like what he suggested. Colonel Gillis and several others wanted me to rent them bachelor quarters, and that’s the way it all came about. It wasn’t my fault; I couldn’t help myself, Bevy.”
“And what about Mr. Cowperwood?” inquired Berenice curiously. She had begun of late to think a great deal about Cowperwood. He was so cool, deep, dynamic, in a way resourceful, like herself.
“There’s nothing about him,” replied Mrs. Carter, looking up defensively. Of all her men friends she best liked Cowperwood. He had never advised her to evil ways or used her house as a convenience to himself alone. “He never did anything but help me out. He advised me to give up my house in Louisville and come East and devote myself to looking after you and Rolfe. He offered to help me until you two should be able to help yourselves, and so I came. Oh, if I had only not been so foolish—so afraid of life! But your father and Mr. Carter just ran through everything.”
She heaved a deep, heartfelt sigh.
“Then we really haven’t anything at all, have we, mother—property or anything else?”
Mrs. Carter shook her head, meaning no.
“And the money we have been spending is Mr. Cowperwood’s?”
“Yes.”
Berenice paused and looked out the window over the wide stretch of park which it commanded. Framed in it like a picture were a small lake, a hill of trees, with a Japanese pagoda effect in the foreground. Over the hill were the yellow towering walls of a great hotel in Central Park West. In the street below could be heard the jingle of streetcars. On a road in the park could be seen a moving line of pleasure vehicles—society taking an airing in the chill November afternoon.
“Poverty, ostracism,” she thought. And should she marry rich? Of course, if she could.
