He strode toward her, seized her hands. “I’m in earnest, Angèle; you’ve no idea how tired I am of loneliness and uncertainty and—and of seeking women; I want someone whom I can love and trust, whom I can teach to love me—we could get married tomorrow. There’s not an obstacle in our way.”
His sincerity left her unmoved. “What would your father say?”
“Oh, we wouldn’t be able to tell him yet; he’d never consent! Of course we’d have to keep things quiet, just ourselves and one or two friends, Martha and Ladislas perhaps, would be in the know.”
More secrets! She pulled her hands away from him. “Oh Roger, Roger! I wouldn’t consider it. No, when I marry I want a man, a man, a real one, someone not afraid to go on his own!” She actually pushed him toward the door. “Some people might revive dead ashes, but not you and I. … I’d never be able to trust you again and I’m sick of secrets and playing games with human relationships. I’m going to take my friendships straight hereafter. Please go. I’ve had a hard summer and I’m very tired. Besides I want to work.”
Baffled, he looked at her, surprise and indignation struggling in his face. “Angèle, are you sure you know what you’re doing? I’ve no intention of coming back, so you’d better take me now.”
“Of course you’re not coming back! I’m sure I wouldn’t want you to; my decision is final.” Not unsympathetically she laughed up into his doleful face, actually touched his cheek. “If you only knew how much you look like a cross baby!”
Her newly developed sympathy and understanding made her think of Ashley. Doubtless Carlotta’s defection would hit him very hard. Her conjecture was correct although the effect of the blow was different from what she had anticipated. Ashley was not so perturbed over the actual loss of the girl as confirmed in his opinion that he was never going to be able to form and keep a lasting friendship. In spite of his wealth, his native timidity had always made him distrustful of himself with women of his own class; a veritable Tony Hardcastle, he spent a great deal of time with women whom he did not actually admire, whom indeed he disliked, because, he said to Angela wistfully, they were the only ones who took him seriously.
“No one but you and Carlotta have ever given me any consideration, have ever liked me for myself, Angèle.”
They were seeing a great deal of each other; in a quiet, unemotional way they were developing a real friendship. Angela had taken up her painting again. She had reentered the classes at Cooper Union and was working with great zest and absorption on a subject which she meant to enter in the competition for scholarships at the school at Fontainebleau. Ashley, who wrote some good verse in the recondite, falsely free style of the present day, fell into the habit of bringing his work down to her little living room, and in the long tender autumn evenings the two worked seriously, with concentration. Ashley had travelled widely and had seen a great deal of life, though usually from the sidelines; Angela for all her lack of wandering, “had lived deeply,” he used to tell her, pondering on some bit of philosophy which she let fall based on the experiences of her difficult life.
“You know, in your way you’re quite a wonder, Angèle; there’s a mystery hanging about you; for all your good spirits, your sense of humour, you’re like the Duse, you seem to move in an aura of suffering, of the pain which comes from too great sensitivity. And yet how can that be so? You’re not old enough, you’ve had too few contacts to know how unspeakable life can be, how damnably she can get you in wrong—”
An enigmatic smile settled on her face. “I don’t know about life, Ralph? How do you think I got the idea for this masterpiece of mine?” She pointed to the painting on which she was then engaged.
“That’s true, that’s true. I’ve wondered often about that composition; lots of times I’ve meant to ask you how you came to evolve it. But keep your mystery to yourself, child; it adds to your charm.”
About this she had her own ideas. Mystery might add to the charm of personality but it certainly could not be said to add to the charm of living. Once she thought that stolen waters were sweetest, but now it was the unwinding road and the open book that most intrigued.
Ashley, she found, for all his shyness, possessed very definite ideas and convictions of his own, was absolutely unfettered in his mode of thought, and quite unmoved by social traditions and standards. An aristocrat if ever there were one, he believed none the less in the essential quality of man and deplored the economic conditions which so often tended to set up superficial and unreal barriers which make as well as separate the classes.
With some trepidation Angela got him on the subject of colour. He considered prejudice the greatest blot on America’s shield. “We’re wrong, all wrong about those people; after all they did to make America habitable! Some day we’re going to wake up to our shame. I hope it won’t be too late.”
“But you wouldn’t want your sister to marry a nigger!”
“I’m amazed, Angèle, at your using such a word as an exclusive term. I’ve known some fine coloured people. There’re hardly any of unmixed blood in the United States, so the term Negro is usually a misnomer. I haven’t a sister; if I had I’d advise her against marriage with an American coloured man because the social pressure here would probably be too great, but that would be absolutely the only ground on which I’d object to it.
