GITA had learned the lesson familiar to all American women, that conversational initiative was one to be cheerfully assumed, more particularly with men as silent as Geoffrey Pelham. She began by reproaching him for his neglect.
“I’ve been working very hard,” he replied, avoiding her eyes.
“But Eustace! He’s devoted to you and has felt hurt. You might have made an exception in his favor. Do you really go nowhere?”
“I won’t say that. I couldn’t very well, as I’m here tonight! Dr. Gaunt insists that society is the best relaxation for a busy man, although I don’t agree with him, but I do go out now and then. It just happened I could not accept any of your invitations.”
“Well! You’ll come to our party a week from Thursday. Eustace has finished his novel and we’re going to have a blow-out. Don’t try to think up an excuse. We’ll expect you.”
“I was only trying to say I’d be delighted.”
They found a table for two in a corner, and although surrounded by high chatter their tête-à-tête was unlikely to be interrupted.
Gita was still uninitiated in coquetry but her eyes as she turned them on Pelham were not devoid of challenge, although she was, at the moment, consumed by nothing more dangerous than curiosity.
“I hear you are devoted to Polly,” she remarked.
He flushed but answered coolly: “Devoted is hardly the word. I have a great admiration for Miss Pleyden and she has shown me much hospitality. I—I’ve never found time to be interested in anyone.”
“Polly has more in her than you suspect. She is not only a dear but she really has a mind if she would cultivate it.”
“I more than suspect it. As I told you before I find her admirable.”
“I was delighted when I heard of the friendship. I’ve always feared she’d marry some duffer and come to her senses too late.”
“I should say she was less likely to make a mistake than most girls, and Leonard, for instance, is a fine fellow.”
Gita glanced across the room at Polly, whose flower-like orbs were lifted sweetly to the compelling gaze of the distinguished young lawyer.
“He’d do very well,” she said musingly. “Polly always said she’d never marry until she met a man of that sort.” She shot a glance at Pelham, who was calmly consuming a plover.
“I’m sure she couldn’t do better.”
“But——” If Polly were as serious as Elsie suspected was it not her loyal duty to aid her in what might be the supreme crisis of her youth? No doubt Pelham was in love with her without realizing it, so scant was his experience with women.
“Well?” Pelham looked up, and in his own eyes there was something of challenge.
“I mean—well—you see—I hardly know how to say it, but I believe Polly is really interested in you.”
“I have amused her because I am a rank outsider, something entirely different from what she has been accustomed to.” And he helped himself to chicken salad.
Gita was torn between what might be a betrayal of Polly and the desire to come to her assistance. She had heard that men sometimes needed but a seed deftly planted to be flattered into complete surrender. And Pelham was not the type to feel only the joy of the hunter. Affection for Polly conquered.
“I believe she is really in love with you,” she said.
He turned pale but looked at her steadily. “If I thought that were true I should refuse to discuss the subject at all. But it is not. . . . Am I to understand that you have turned matchmaker?”
“Not I. But I’d like to see Polly happy.”
“Do you mean that you want me to marry her?” His voice had a harsh directness, quite unlike the mellow subtle tones of Eustace Bylant.
To her surprise Gita felt her face flush, and she dropped her eyes.
“Yes—I think I do.” But she frowned, not at him but herself.
“I never saw but one woman I wanted to marry and as—that is forever denied me I shall never marry at all. I’m not the sort of man, I hope, to make love to the wife of my friend, but—I’d be grateful if you would take no further interest in my casual friendships with other women.” He was very white but his voice was hard and deliberate and his eyes angry. He lifted his fork and his sensitive fingers were steady.
Gita turned cold and the blood left her face and seemed to settle about her heart, whose thumping stirred the sunflower on her breast. She was astounded and horrified—and not at Geoffrey Pelham! And then she felt a sensation of sheer terror. What had happened to her? Of love in the sexual sense she was incapable and she assuredly felt for this man none of the calm active affection she so liberally bestowed on Eustace and her two other friends. She was barely conscious of liking him, although he had haunted her thoughts occasionally and had given her an odd sensation the night of the Christmas party. She had heard a great deal of the magnetic vibrations between men and women, inspired by nothing more elevated than the automatic response of the opposite poles of sex, but she was far removed from that category. She had lived in an atmosphere of sex since she came to New York and its vibrations had glanced off her as harmlessly as lightning from basalt. If she no longer regarded the subject with profound distaste she was totally uninterested. Eustace had taught her that men could be clean and decent and wholly admirable, and as a rule she chose to see only the fine side of the others and viewed their moral divagations with indifference.
She dropped her handkerchief on the side farthest from Pelham and bent down until the blood returned to her head, then switched on her analytical faculty. She had been startled—who would not be? Geoffrey Pelham!—and horrified that she was the innocent cause of desolation in two hearts capable of the highest happiness. Polly was doomed to bitter disappointment, and this honorable and remarkable man would go through life a dreary bachelor for her sake. (She was unable to visualize Polly as an old maid.) She felt Jezebelian. And loyalty flooded her for Eustace. For the moment she was almost angry at the man whose life she had unwittingly ruined, and craned her neck until her eyes found her husband, seated at a distant table, laughing and talking with every appearance of enjoyment. She caught his eye and they exchanged a glance of gay understanding which suffused her with a virtuous glow and enabled her to turn to Geoffrey, now at work on a peach. She said calmly:
“That was an awkward silence but you frightened me out of my wits. Will you peel me a peach? It’s a pleasure to watch you. And when I eat a hothouse peach in winter I feel as if I had dissolved a pearl in champagne—although Cleopatra’s wines must have been stronger than bootleggers’.”