But at last they were out of the city limits and could talk. For the first time since she had known him he began to speak of his possessions. “Anything, anything that money can buy, Angèle, I can get and I can give.” His voice was charged with intention. They were going in the direction of Forest Hills; he had a cottage out there, perhaps she would like to see it. And there was a grove not far away. “We’ll picnic there,” he said, “and—and talk.” He certainly was nervous, Angela thought, and liked him the better for it.
The cottage or rather the house in Forest Hills was beautiful, absolutely a gem. And it was completely furnished with taste and marked daintiness. “What do you keep it furnished for?” asked Angela wondering. Roger murmured that it had been empty for a long time but he had seen this equipment and it had struck him that it was just the thing for this house so he had bought it; thereby insensibly reminding his companion again that he could afford to gratify any whim. They drove away from the exquisite little place in silence. Angela was inclined to be amused; surely no one could have asked for a better opening than that afforded by the house. What would make him talk, she wondered, and what, oh what would he say? Something far, far more romantic than poor Matthew Henson could ever have dreamed of—yes and far, far less romantic, something subconscious prompted her, than Anthony Cross had said. Anthony with his poverty and honour and desperate vows!
They had reached the grove, they had spread the rug and a tablecloth; Roger had covered it with dainties. He would not let her lift a finger, she was the guest and he her humble servant. She looked at him smiling, still forming vague contrasts with him and Matthew and Anthony.
Roger dropped his sandwich, came and sat behind her. He put his arm around her and shifted his shoulder so that her head lay against it.
“Don’t look at me that way Angèle, Angèle! I can’t stand it.”
So it was actually coming. “How do you want me to look at you?”
He bent his head down to hers and kissed her. “Like this, like this! Oh Angèle, did you like the house?”
“Like it? I loved it.”
“Darling, I had it done for you, you know. I thought you’d like it.”
It seemed a strange thing to have done without consulting her, and anyway she did not want to live in a suburb. Opal Street had been suburb enough for her. She wanted, required, the noise and tumult of cities.
“I don’t care for suburbs, Roger.” How strange for him to talk about a place to live in and never a word of love!
“My dear girl, you don’t have to live in a suburb if you don’t want to. I’ve got a place, an apartment in Seventy-second Street, seven rooms; that would be enough for you and your maid, wouldn’t it? I could have this furniture moved over there, or if you think it too cottagey, you could have new stuff altogether.”
Seven rooms for three people! Why she wanted a drawing-room and a studio and where would he put his things? This sudden stinginess was quite inexplicable.
“But Roger, seven rooms wouldn’t be big enough.”
He laughed indulgently, his face radiant with relief and triumph. “So she wants a palace, does she? Well, she shall have it. A whole ménage if you want it, a place on Riverside Drive, servants and a car. Only somehow I hadn’t thought of you as caring about that kind of thing. After that little hole in the wall you’ve been living in on Jayne Street I’d have expected you to find the place in Seventy-Second Street as large as you’d care for!”
A little hurt, she replied: “But I was thinking of you too. There wouldn’t be room for your things. And I thought you’d want to go on living in the style you’d been used to.” A sudden welcome explanation dawned on her rising fear. “Are you keeping this a secret from your father? Is that what’s the trouble?”
Under his thin, bright skin he flushed. “Keeping what a secret from my father? What are you talking about, Angèle?”
She countered with his own question. “What are you talking about, Roger?”
He tightened his arms about her, his voice stammered, his eyes were bright and watchful. “I’m asking you to live in my house, to live for me; to be my girl; to keep a love-nest where I and only I may come.” He smiled shamefacedly over the cheap current phrase.
She pushed him away from her; her jaw fallen and slack but her figure taut. Yet under her stunned bewilderment her mind was racing. So this was her castle, her fortress of protection, her refuge. And what answer should she make? Should she strike him across his eager, half-shamed face, should she get up and walk away, forbidding him to follow? Or should she stay and hear it out? Stay and find out what this man was really like; what depths were in him and, she supposed, in other men. But especially in this man with his boyish, gallant air and his face as guileless and as innocent apparently as her own.
That was what she hated in herself, she told that self fiercely, shut up with her own thoughts the next afternoon in her room. She hated herself for staying and listening. It had given him courage to talk and talk. But what she most hated had been the shrewdness, the practicality which lay beneath that resolve to hear it out. She had thought of those bills; she had thought of her poverty, of her helplessness, and she had thought too of Martha Burden’s dictum: “You must make him want you.” Well here was a way to make him want her and to turn that
