Berenice, who had always been more or less interested in him, temperamentally biased, indeed, in his direction because of his efficiency, simplicity, directness, and force, was especially touched in this instance by his utter frankness and generosity. She might question his temperamental control over his own sincerity in the future, but she could scarcely question that at present he was sincere. Moreover, his long period of secret love and admiration, the thought of so powerful a man dreaming of her in this fashion, was so flattering. It soothed her troubled vanity and shame in what had gone before. His straightforward confession had a kind of nobility which was electric, moving. She looked at him as he stood there, a little gray about the temples—the most appealing ornament of some men to some women—and for the life of her she could not help being moved by a kind of tenderness, sympathy, mothering affection. Obviously he did need the woman his attitude seemed to show that he needed, some woman of culture, spirit, taste, amorousness; or, at least, he was entitled to dream of her. As he stood before her he seemed a kind of superman, and yet also a bad boy—handsome, powerful, hopeful, not so very much older than herself now, impelled by some blazing internal force which harried him on and on. How much did he really care for her? How much could he? How much could he care for anyone? Yet see all he had done to interest her. What did that mean? To say all this? To do all this? Outside was his car brown and radiant in the snow. He was the great Frank Algernon Cowperwood, of Chicago, and he was pleading with her, a mere chit of a girl, to be kind to him, not to put him out of her life entirely. It touched her intellect, her pride, her fancy.
Aloud she said: “I like you better now. I really believe in you. I never did, quite, before. Not that I think I ought to let you spend your money on me or mother—I don’t. But I admire you. You make me. I understand how it is, I think. I know what your ambitions are. I have always felt that I did, in part. But you mustn’t talk to me any more now. I want to think. I want to think over what you have said. I don’t know whether I can bring myself to it or not.” (She noticed that his eyes seemed to move somehow in their deepest depths again.) “But we won’t talk about it any more at present.”
“But, Berenice,” he added, with a real plea in his voice, “I wonder if you do understand. I have been so lonely—I am—”
“Yes, I do,” she replied, holding out her hand. “We are going to be friends, whatever happens, from now on, because I really like you. You mustn’t ask me to decide about the other, though, today. I can’t do it. I don’t want to. I don’t care to.”
“Not when I would so gladly give you everything—when I need it so little?”
“Not until I think it out for myself. I don’t think so, though. No,” she replied, with an air. “There, Mr. Guardian Father,” she laughed, pushing his hand away.
Cowperwood’s heart bounded. He would have given millions to take her close in his arms. As it was he smiled appealingly.
“Don’t you want to jump in and come to New York with me? If your mother isn’t at the apartment you could stop at the Netherland.”
“No, not today. I expect to be in soon. I will let you know, or mother will.”
He bustled out and into the machine after a moment of parley, waving to her over the purpling snow of the evening as his machine tore eastward, planning to make New York by dinnertime. If he could just keep her in this friendly, sympathetic attitude. If he only could!
LIV
Wanted—Fifty-Year Franchises
Whatever his momentary satisfaction in her friendly acceptance of his confession, the uncertain attitude of Berenice left Cowperwood about where he was before. By a strange stroke of fate Braxmar, his young rival, had been eliminated, and Berenice had been made to see him, Cowperwood, in his true colors of love and of service for her. Yet plainly she did not accept them at his own valuation. More than ever was he conscious of the fact that he had fallen in tow of an amazing individual, one who saw life from a distinct and peculiar point of view and who was not to be bent to his will. That fact more than anything else—for her grace and beauty merely emblazoned it—caused him to fall into a hopeless infatuation.
He said to himself over and over, “Well, I can live without her if I must,” but at this stage the mere thought was an actual stab in his vitals. What, after all, was life, wealth, fame, if you couldn’t have the woman you wanted—love, that indefinable, unnamable coddling of the spirit which the strongest almost more than the weakest crave? At last he saw clearly, as within a chalice-like nimbus, that the ultimate end of fame, power, vigor was beauty, and that beauty was a compound of the taste, the emotion, the innate culture, passion, and dreams of a woman like Berenice Fleming. That was it: that was it. And beyond was nothing save crumbling age, darkness, silence.
In the meantime, owing to the preliminary activity and tact of his agents and advisers, the Sunday newspapers were vying with one another in describing the wonders of his new house in New York—its cost, the value of its ground,
