Under his freckles his brown skin paled. “You think there’s a chance?”
“My dear, I wouldn’t dare say. I know she likes you very, very much. And I don’t think she regards you as a brother.”
“Angela, you wouldn’t fool me?”
“Why should I do that? And remember after all I’m giving you no assurance. I’m merely saying it’s worth taking a chance. Now let’s see, we’ll straighten up this place and then we must fly.”
At the station she kissed him goodbye. “Anyway you’re always a brother to me. Think of what I’ve told you, Matthew; act on it.”
“I shall. Oh, Angela, suppose it should be that God sent you down here today?”
“Perhaps He did.” They parted solemnly.
Three hours later found her entering her sister’s apartment. Jinny, her cold raging, her eyes inflamed and weeping, greeted her plaintively. “Look at me, Angela. And you leaving tomorrow! I’ll never be able to make that boat!” The telephone rang. “It’s been ringing steadily for the last hour, somebody calling for you. Do answer it.”
The message was from Ashley. He had been away in New Orleans. “And I came back and found that clipping. I knew you sent it. Girl, the way I’ve pursued you this day! Finally I caught up with Martha Burden, she told me where you were staying. May I come up? Be there in half an hour.”
“Not tonight, Ralph. Would you like to come to the boat tomorrow?”
“So you’re going anyhow? Bully! But not before I’ve seen you! Suppose I take you to the boat?”
“Awfully nice of you, but I’m going with my sister.”
Here Jinny in a voice full of misplaced consonants told her she was going to do nothing of the sort. “With this cold!”
Angela spoke into the receiver again. “My sister says she isn’t going, so I will fall back on you if I may.” She hung up.
Virginia wanted to hear of the trip. The two sisters sat talking far into the night, but Angela said no word about Matthew.
Monday was a day of surprises. Martha and Ladislas Starr, unable to be on hand for the sailing of the boat, came up to the house to drive down town with the departing traveller. Secretly Angela was delighted with this arrangement, but it brought a scowl to Ashley’s face.
Virginia, miserable with the wretchedness attendant on a summer cold, bore up bravely. “I don’t mind letting you go like this from the house; but I couldn’t stand the ship! Angela, you’re not to worry about me one bit. Only come back to me—happy. I know you will. Oh how different this is from that parting years ago in Philadelphia!”
“Yes,” said Angela soberly. “Then I was to be physically ninety miles away from you, but we were really seas apart. Now—darling, three thousand miles are nothing when there is love and trust and understanding. And Jinny, listen! Life is full of surprises. If a chance for real happiness comes your way don’t be afraid to grasp at it.”
“Cryptic,” wheezed Jinny, laughing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’ll do my best to land any happiness that comes drifting toward me.” They kissed each other gravely, almost coldly, without tears. But neither could trust herself to say the actual goodbye.
Angela was silent almost all the way down to the dock, answering her friends only in monosyllables. There, another surprise awaited her in the shape of Mrs. Denver, who remained, however, only for a few moments. “I couldn’t stand having you go,” she said pitifully, “without seeing you for one last time.” And, folding the girl in a close embrace, she broke down and murmured sadly of a lost daughter who would have been “perhaps like you, dear, had she lived.”
Elizabeth Sandburg, the gay, the complacent, the beloved of life, clung to her, weeping, “I can’t bear to lose you, Angèle.” Walter put his arm about her. “Kiss me, old girl. And mind, if you need anything, anything, you’re to call on us. If you get sick we’ll come over after you—am I right, Lizzie?”
“Yes, of course, of course … and don’t call me Lizzie. … Come away, can’t you, and leave them a moment together. Don’t you see Ashley glaring at you?”
They withdrew to a good point of vantage on the dock.
Angela, surprised and weeping, remembering both Mrs. Denver’s words and the manifestations of kindness in her stateroom said: “They really did love me after all, didn’t they?”
“Yes,” said Ashley earnestly, “we all love you. I’m coming over to see you by and by, Angèle, may I? You know we’ve a lot of things to talk about, some things which you perhaps think mean a great deal to me but which in reality mean nothing. Then on the other hand there are some matters which actually do mean something to me but whose value to you I’m not sure of.”
“Oh,” she said, wiping her eyes and remembering her former secret. “You aren’t coming over to ask me to marry you, are you? You don’t have to do that. And anyway ‘it is not now as it hath been before.’ There’s no longer a mystery about me, you know. So the real attraction’s gone. Remember, I’m not expecting a thing of you, so please, please don’t ask it. Ralph, I can’t placard myself, and I suppose there will be lots of times when in spite of myself I’ll be ‘passing.’ But I want you to know that from now on, so far as sides are concerned, I am on the coloured side. And I don’t want you to come over on that side.” She shook her head finally. “Too many complications even for you.”
For though she knew he believed in his brave words, she was too sadly experienced to ask an American to put them to the
