But Carl heard none of the things she was saying. He sat with his face in his hands, his shoulders drooping dejectedly. He raised his head as she finished speaking. Mimi was touched with the look of pain upon it.
“Mimi,” he pleaded, “let’s forget all this silly talk and let things go on like they were before. I was wrong in taking you to that hall—it wasn’t wrong in itself but wrong in the eyes of these people here—so I shouldn’t have let you go. You’re the only person here I care about seeing. Oh, Mimi, don’t let’s break off here. I’m a weak and foolish creature and the only thing that’s held me up has been you.”
Desperately, despairingly, he pleaded, but Mimi, though she felt herself weakening, steeled herself against the almost overwhelming impulse to take Carl’s head into her lap and hold it to her breast as she would a child’s. The confident, rebellious man had become a child and the mother instinct, strong within her, almost overpowered her. She found herself swept by a flaming, consuming affection for Carl. Had he remained assertive, sure of himself, she would have mastered it easily. But his self-revilement, his dependency upon her touched her deeply. Love had come to her and now she must put it from her. Loyalty to Hilda and the promise she had made to her demanded it.
“No, Carl,” she firmly reiterated her resolution. …
IX
The blazing suns of August and September cooled into the golden haze of Indian summer but its beauties brought little happiness to three young people of Atlanta. Hilda had listened with tearful gratitude to Mimi’s recital of her talk with Carl. Hopefully she had waited for some sign of interest, some word, some gesture from Carl, but day followed day and she yet was looking in vain. Languidly she prepared for the opening of school when she would begin her career as teacher, the customary interlude between student days and marriage for the girls to whom custom forbade pursuit of any other calling. Hilda passed through various periods of hope, of despair, of rage against herself, against Mimi, against Carl. At times she consoled herself that all affairs of this sort took time, that she need but wait and then her own excellencies would become so apparent, Carl would see how desirable it would be for him to follow up the opening she had made through Mimi’s intercession.
At other times she reviled herself as a hoyden, a brazen creature, a person without shame. Her talk with Mimi assumed gigantic proportions as a stripping bare of all her inner self, shamelessly flaunting her affection for a boy not worth the sacrifice. She castigated herself with all the cruelty of some zealot, crazed by religious fervour, who subjects himself to all manner of barbarities. Tartarus itself nor the Spanish inquisition contained such instruments of torture as those with which unrequited love can flagellate its victims, Hilda learned, and her unhappiness was not lessened by her lack of one in whom she could confide. She dared not risk further pain even from her mother, who might not understand, she thought, and whose lightest word would be as salt to a raw, quivering wound if she should speak lightly or with uncomplete understanding. Hilda’s conviction that her procedure had been wrong and very unwise, certain to drive Carl further from her than achieve any other end, only added to her unwillingness to confide even in her mother.
She thought several times of talking again with Mimi but each time, upon reflection, she rejected this procedure. As time passed with no sign from Carl other than he seemed to avoid her now almost obviously, she began to harbour a new suspicion of Mimi—she wondered if Mimi had said to Carl exactly what she had told Hilda she had said.
She made for herself greater unhappiness by conjecturing phrases or sentences (or implications in phrases or sentences) that Mimi might have used in talking with him. Especially did such thoughts race through her mind after she had turned out the light at night and crept into her bed. Like a child frightened by ghosts and goblins and weird figments of the disordered brain, she shrank in terror from her own thoughts. She saw herself being laughed at by Carl and Mimi, being ridiculed as a brainless, silly little fool.
Daylight always brought relief from these tortures and regret for having entertained such thoughts. She would then rush as soon as she could to Mimi and try by unexplained little tendernesses to atone for her distrust. Mimi was often puzzled by these outbursts and she wondered what caused them. She was too wise, however, to ask directly—she waited for some voluntary word from Hilda, which Hilda, in her shyness and because she was so thoroughly ashamed of her suspicions, never vouchsafed.
Nor was Mimi so free from her own worries that she could expend much thought on the problems of others. After her dismissal, Carl had resolutely avoided her, his pride too great to permit him to risk a second rebuff at her hands. Three times she had seen him approaching her on Auburn Avenue. Twice he had turned into a side street. Once he had entered a grocery store where she was certain he had no reason for going other than to avoid her. With a woman’s perversity of mind, she was annoyed that he should so explicitly obey her command that their friendship be kept on a mere disinterested plane. Mimi had never before been touched by the flaming torch of love nor even
