Angela liked him best when he talked about “my dad”; he never mentioned the vastness of his wealth, but by now she could not have helped guessing even without Paulette’s aid that he was a wealthy man. She would not take jewellery from him, but there was a steady stream of flowers, fruit, candy, books, fine copies of the old masters. She was afraid and ashamed to express a longing in his presence. And with all this his steady, constant attendance. And an odd watchfulness which she felt but could not explain.
“He must love me,” she said to herself, thinking of his caresses. She had been unable to keep him from kissing her. Her uneasiness had amused and charmed him: he laughed at her Puritanism, succeeded in shaming her out of it. “Child, where have you lived? Why there’s nothing in a kiss. If I didn’t kiss you I couldn’t come to see you. And I have to see you, Angèle!” His voice grew deep; the expression in his eyes made her own falter.
Yet he did not ask her to marry him. “But I suppose it’s because he can see I don’t love him yet.” And she wondered what it would be like to love. Even Jinny knew more about this than she, for she had felt, perhaps still did feel, a strong affection for Matthew Henson. Well, anyway, if they married she would probably come to love him; most women learned to love their husbands. At first after her conversation with Paulette about Roger she had rather expected a diminution at any time of his attentions, for after all she was unknown; from Roger’s angle she would be more than outside the pale. But she was sure now that he loved and would want to marry her, for it never occurred to her that men bestowed attentions such as these on a passing fancy. She saw her life rounding out like a fairy tale. Poor, coloured—coloured in America; unknown, a nobody! And here at her hand was the forward thrust shadow of love and of great wealth. She would do lots of good among coloured people; she would see that Miss Powell, for instance, had her scholarship. Oh she would hunt out girls and men like Seymour Porter—she had almost forgotten his name—or was it Arthur Sawyer?—and give them a taste of life in its fullness and beauty such as they had never dreamed of.
Tonight she was to go out with Roger. She wore her flame-coloured dress again; a pretty green one was also hanging up in her closet, but she wore the flame one because it lighted her up from within—lighted not only her lovely, fine body but her mind too. Her satisfaction with her appearance let loose some inexplicable spring of gaiety and merriment and simplicity so that she seemed almost daring.
Roger, sitting opposite, tried to probe her mood, tried to gauge the invitation of her manner and its possibilities. She touched him once or twice, familiarly; he thought almost possessively. She seemed to be within reach now if along with that accessibility she had recklessness. It was this attribute which for the first time tonight he thought to divine within her. If in addition to her insatiable interest in life—for she was always asking him about people and places—she possessed this recklessness, then indeed he might put to her a proposal which had been hanging on his lips for weeks and months. Something innocent, pathetically untouched about her had hitherto kept him back. But if she had the requisite daring! They were dining in East Tenth Street in a small café—small contrasted with the Park Avenue Hotel to which he had first taken her. But about them stretched the glitter and perfection of crystal and silver, of marvellous napery and of obsequious service. Everything, Angela thought, looking about her, was translated. The slight odour of food was, she told Fielding, really an aroma: the mineral water which he was drinking because he could not help it and she because she could not learn to like wine, was nectar; the bread, the fish, the courses were ambrosia. The food, too, in general was to be spoken of as viands.
“Vittles, translated,” she said laughing.
“And you, you, too, are translated. Angèle, you are wonderful, you are charming,” his lips answered but his senses beat and hammered. Intoxicated with the magic of the moment and the surroundings, she turned her smiling countenance a little nearer, and saw his face change, darken. A cloud over the sun.
“Excuse me,” he said and walked hastily across the room back of her. In astonishment she turned and looked after him. At a table behind her three coloured people (under the direction of a puzzled and troubled waiter,) were about to take a table. Roger went up and spoke to the headwaiter authoritatively, even angrily. The latter glanced about the room, nodded obsequiously and crossing, addressed the little group. There was a hasty, slightly acrid discussion. Then the three filed out, past Angela’s table this time, their heads high.
She turned back to her plate, her heart sick. For her the evening was ended. Roger came back, his face flushed, triumphant, “Well I put a spoke in the wheel of those ‘coons’! They forget themselves so quickly, coming in here spoiling white people’s appetites. I told the manager if they brought one of their damned suits I’d be responsible. I wasn’t going to have them here with you, Angèle. I could tell that night at Martha Burden’s by the way you looked at that girl that you had no time for darkies. I’ll bet you’d never been that near to one before in your life, had you? Wonder where Martha picked that one up.”
She was silent, lifeless. He went on recounting instances of how effectively he had “spoked the wheel” of various
