“Oh yes, we should,” said Corey, “I assure you.”
They looked at each other.
“I really think I believed I was saying something,” said the girl.
“And so did I,” replied the young man. They laughed rather wildly, and then they both became rather grave.
He took the chair she gave him, and looked across at her, where she sat on the other side of the hearth, in a chair lower than his, with her hands dropped in her lap, and the back of her head on her shoulders as she looked up at him. The soft-coal fire in the grate purred and flickered; the drop-light cast a mellow radiance on her face. She let her eyes fall, and then lifted them for an irrelevant glance at the clock on the mantel.
“Mother and Irene have gone to the Spanish Students’ concert.”
“Oh, have they?” asked Corey; and he put his hat, which he had been holding in his hand, on the floor beside his chair.
She looked down at it for no reason, and then looked up at his face for no other, and turned a little red. Corey turned a little red himself. She who had always been so easy with him now became a little constrained.
“Do you know how warm it is out-of-doors?” he asked.
“No, is it warm? I haven’t been out all day.”
“It’s like a summer night.”
She turned her face towards the fire, and then started abruptly. “Perhaps it’s too warm for you here?”
“Oh no, it’s very comfortable.”
“I suppose it’s the cold of the last few days that’s still in the house. I was reading with a shawl on when you came.”
“I interrupted you.”
“Oh no. I had finished the book. I was just looking over it again.”
“Do you like to read books over?”
“Yes; books that I like at all.”
“That was it?” asked Corey.
The girl hesitated. “It has rather a sentimental name. Did you ever read it?—Tears, Idle Tears.”
“Oh yes; they were talking of that last night; it’s a famous book with ladies. They break their hearts over it. Did it make you cry?”
“Oh, it’s pretty easy to cry over a book,” said Penelope, laughing; “and that one is very natural till you come to the main point. Then the naturalness of all the rest makes that seem natural too; but I guess it’s rather forced.”
“Her giving him up to the other one?”
“Yes; simply because she happened to know that the other one had cared for him first. Why should she have done it? What right had she?”
“I don’t know. I suppose that the self-sacrifice—”
“But it wasn’t self-sacrifice—or not self-sacrifice alone. She was sacrificing him too; and for someone who couldn’t appreciate him half as much as she could. I’m provoked with myself when I think how I cried over that book—for I did cry. It’s silly—it’s wicked for anyone to do what that girl did. Why can’t they let people have a chance to behave reasonably in stories?”
“Perhaps they couldn’t make it so attractive,” suggested Corey, with a smile.
“It would be novel, at any rate,” said the girl. “But so it would in real life, I suppose,” she added.
“I don’t know. Why shouldn’t people in love behave sensibly?”
“That’s a very serious question,” said Penelope gravely. “I couldn’t answer it,” and she left him the embarrassment of supporting an inquiry which she had certainly instigated herself. She seemed to have finally recovered her own ease in doing this. “Do you admire our autumnal display, Mr. Corey?”
“Your display?”
“The trees in the Square. We think it’s quite equal to an opening at Jordan & Marsh’s.”
“Ah, I’m afraid you wouldn’t let me be serious even about your maples.”
“Oh yes, I should—if you like to be serious.”
“Don’t you?”
“Well not about serious matters. That’s the reason that book made me cry.”
“You make fun of everything. Miss Irene was telling me last night about you.”
“Then it’s no use for me to deny it so soon. I must give Irene a talking to.”
“I hope you won’t forbid her to talk about you!”
She had taken up a fan from the table, and held it, now between her face and the fire, and now between her face and him. Her little visage, with that arch, lazy look in it, topped by its mass of dusky hair, and dwindling from the full cheeks to the small chin, had a Japanese effect in the subdued light, and it had the charm which comes to any woman with happiness. It would be hard to say how much of this she perceived that he felt. They talked about other things a while, and then she came back to what he had said. She glanced at him obliquely round her fan, and stopped moving it. “Does Irene talk about me?” she asked.
“I think so—yes. Perhaps it’s only I who talk about you. You must blame me if it’s wrong,” he returned.
“Oh, I didn’t say it was wrong,” she replied. “But I hope if you said anything very bad of me you’ll let me know what it was, so that I can reform—”
“No, don’t change, please!” cried the young man.
Penelope caught her breath, but went on resolutely—“or rebuke you for speaking evil of dignities.” She looked down at the fan, now flat in her lap, and tried to govern her head, but it trembled, and she remained looking down. Again they let the talk stray, and then it was he who brought it back to themselves, as if it had not left them.
“I have to talk of you,” said Corey, “because I get to talk to you so seldom.”
“You mean that I do all the talking when we’re—together?” She glanced sidewise at him; but she reddened after speaking the last word.
“We’re so seldom together,” he pursued.
“I don’t know what you mean—”
“Sometimes I’ve thought—I’ve been afraid—that you avoided me.”
“Avoided you?”
“Yes! Tried not to be alone with me.”
She might have told him that there was no reason why she should be alone with him, and that it was very
