They went to Coney Island. “The ocean will be there, but very few people and only a very few amusements,” said Roger. They had a delightful time; they were like schoolchildren, easily and frankly amused; they entered all the booths that were open, ate popcorn and hot dogs and other local dainties. And presently they were flying home under the double line of trees on Ocean Parkway and entering the bosky loveliness of Prospect Park. Roger slowed down a little.
“Oh,” said Angela. “I love this car.”
He bent toward her instantly. “Does it please you? Did you miss it when you made me stay away from you?”
She was afraid she had made a mistake: “Yes, but that’s not why I let you come back.”
“I know that. But you do like it, don’t you, comfort and beauty and dainty surroundings?”
“Yes,” she said solemnly, “I love them all.”
He was silent then for a long, long time, his face a little set, a worried line on his forehead.
“Well now what’s he thinking about?” she asked herself, watching his hands and their clever manipulation of the steering wheel though his thoughts, she knew, were not on that.
He turned to her with an air of having made up his mind. “Angèle, I want you to promise to spend a day out riding with me pretty soon. I—I have something I want to say to you.” He was a worldly young man about town but he was actually mopping his brow. “I’ve got to go south for a week for my father—he owns some timber down there with which he used to supply sawmills but since the damned niggers have started running north it’s been something of a weight on his hands. He wants me to go down and see whether it’s worth his while to hold on to it any longer. It’s so rarely that he asks anything of me along a business line that I’d hate to refuse him. But I’ll be back the morning of the twenty-sixth. I’ll have to spend the afternoon and evening with him out on Long Island but on the twenty-seventh could you go out with me?”
She said as though all this preamble portended nothing: “I couldn’t give you the whole day, but I’d go in the afternoon.”
“Oh,” his face fell a little. “Well, the afternoon then. Only of course we won’t be able to go far out. Perhaps you’d like me to arrange a lunch and we’d go to one of the Parks, Central or the Bronx, or Van Cortlandt—”
“No, not Van Cortlandt,” she told him. That park was sacred to Anthony Cross.
“Well, wherever you say. We can settle it even that day. The main thing is that you’ll go.”
She said to herself. “Aren’t men funny! He could have asked me five times over while he was making all these arrangements.” But she was immensely relieved, even happy. She felt very kindly toward him; perhaps she was in love after all, only she was not the demonstrative kind. It was too late for him to come in, but they sat in the car in the dark security of Jayne Street and she let him take her in his arms and kiss her again and again. For the first time she returned his kisses.
Weary but triumphant she mounted the stairs almost stumbling from a sudden, overwhelming fatigue. She had been under a strain! But it was all over now; she had conquered, she had been the stronger. She had secured not only him but an assured future, wealth, protection, influence, even power. She herself was power—like the women one reads about, like Cleopatra—Cleopatra’s African origin intrigued her, it was a fitting comparison. Smiling, she took the last steep stairs lightly, springily, suddenly reinvigorated.
As she opened the door a little heap of letters struck her foot. Switching on the light she sat in the easy chair and incuriously turned them over. They were bills for the most part, she had had to dress to keep herself dainty and desirable for Roger. At the bottom of the heap was a letter from Virginia. When she became Mrs. Roger Fielding she would never have to worry about a bill again; how she would laugh when she remembered the small amounts for which these called! Never again would she feel the slight quake of dismay which always overtook her when she saw the words: “Miss Angèle Mory in account with—” Outside of the regular monthly statement for gas she had never seen a bill in her father’s house. Well, she’d have no difficulty in getting over her squeamish training.
Finally she opened Jinny’s letter. Her sister had written:
“Angela I’m coming up for an exam on the twenty-eighth. I’ll arrive on the twenty-sixth or I could come the day before. You’ll meet me, won’t you? I know where I’m going to stay,”—she gave an address on 139th Street—“but I don’t know how to get there; I don’t know your school hours, write and tell me so I can arrive when you’re free. There’s no reason why I should put you out.”
So Virginia was really coming to try her luck in New York. It would be nice to have her so near. “Though I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing so much of each other,” she thought, absently reaching for her schedule. “Less than ever now, for I suppose Roger and I will live in Long Island; yes, that would be much wiser. I’ll wear a veil when
