Her kind hand on his steadied him.
“For a while I kept on playing ducks and drakes with my life—that was really why Joanna chucked me, you know—but all of a sudden I came to my senses, and now I’ve gone back to studying and I’ll be all right yet, Aunt Sue. You and I’ll have a nice little house somewhere. You’ll see.” He checked himself: “Unless this war intervenes. Of course I’d have to go into that. America makes me sick, you know, like I used to make you I guess, but darn it all, she is my country. My folks helped make her what she is even if they were slaves.”
Aunt Susan beamed on him. “Your great-grandfather fought in the Revolution, Peter, and two of your uncles, my brothers, were in the Civil War. If you enlist you’ll only be following their example.”
He looked at his watch. “I must go, dear. Do you know, it’s as though I had just discovered you today.” Her hands were in his and he caught them up and kissed them, bending his shapely curly head a little. “If I have to go away suddenly, I’ll send you a few of my things, the Bye Bible and all that, you know. But you’ll see me again.”
He caught up his hat and ran out.
“That Joanna is a fool and a minx,” said the old lady ungratefully. “I hope he didn’t suffer much. It’s a wonder some other girl hasn’t got him now.”
Peter had not told her about Maggie. “Not worth while,” he muttered to himself, taking the subway steps in four leaps. “Maggie’s got to let me off. I’ll ask her, I’ll explain. God, what a cad I feel!” He tugged at his collar. “But she’ll be better off. I know she will. Now I wonder why she married that Neal fellow instead of waiting to give Philip a chance?”
He mused over this sitting in the subway train with his watch in his hand. “I shouldn’t have spent so much time with Aunt Susan.” He had arranged with Morgan and some other students for a comprehensive review at his house that same night. It would never do for him not to show up on time, they were all busy fellows.
Everything depended on Maggie.
He rushed out of the subway and came swinging along the street looking for her number. As he turned abruptly toward the house he caromed into a tall, heavily set man standing idly and yet purposefully at the bottom of the steps. Peter rang the bell, conscious as he did so that the man had received his apologies only with an odd glare. One last glance over his shoulder just before he went in showed the stranger staring fixedly at the front door as though to see who opened it.
Mis’ Sparrow let him in. Maggie was in the “settin’ room” at the head of the stairs, she told him as she herself went out. He ran up to arrive at a landing so dark that he knocked over a chair. The door was only slightly open, so he knocked.
“Come in,” Maggie called listlessly. “Oh, is that you, Peter? I’d been expecting you all day and then finally gave you up. Was that you stumbling on the landing? I’m always at mother to keep the light going there. I don’t know why she won’t. Here, I’ll turn it on now.”
But Peter, unwilling to lose more time, begged her not to bother. “Come over here and sit down, Maggie. We’ve lots to talk about.”
He hadn’t kissed her, she noticed, observing his nervousness.
“What’s the matter, Peter? You seem so excited.”
“Do I? Well, I’ve had a full day—early breakfast, the trip, and walking around downtown—and then visiting Aunt Susan and breaking my neck to get here. That’s moving pretty swift, isn’t it?”
To control her own lack of composure she asked him to let her see his instruments. “My, aren’t they shiny and pretty and sharp? And each one with your name on it? That’s splendid. No chance of having them stolen.”
“No,” he replied absently, taking the little leather case from her hand and placing it still open on the table. “No, not a chance. Listen, Maggie, I’ve—I’ve got to go pretty soon, must be back in Philadelphia by nine o’clock, I—I want to talk to you frankly for a moment or two, about ourselves.”
She sat expectantly. “Maggie, I don’t want you to think me a cad—I’m not that really—but even if you do think me one I’ve come to ask you to release me. We—our affair has been a mistake, I had no business dragging you into it. I am sure you don’t love me—why should you love anyone who’s trifled with his life as I have? And I—I don’t—you understand, Maggie, I have and always shall have the highest regard for you. There’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for you, for a girl of your fine qualities—”
“Except marry her,” she thought.
“But I find—it was unspeakable of me to make the mistake—I find I don’t love you, Maggie, as a man should love his—his wife. And that’s a bad way to start a marriage, don’t you think?” He thought he read scorn in her watching eyes, and hastened to fortify his excuse. “You know, I’ve been in love once, I know what it ought to be.”
She said in a level, absolutely emotionless voice,
