WHEN she returned she found Eustace smoking in what she called her ark. He rose with a curtsey as yet unsubmerged by domesticity and shook hands with her.
“Your cheeks are as red as pippins,” he said. “Been having a tramp?”
“Up to Harlem and back. Polly is going to marry Dr. Pelham and may have to live there. Thought I’d see what it looks like.”
She flung her hat on the floor, ruffled her hair, and threw herself into an easy chair. Eustace was staring.
“Polly and Geoff——I don’t grasp it. You must be mistaken.”
“You mustn’t breathe it. But legally we are one, and there’s no harm in telling you. I think it’s serious with both.” She had no intention of betraying Polly further, but the desire to talk of the momentous possibility was irresistible and Eustace was safe.
“ ‘Legally we are one.’ ” He repeated the words automatically; then recovered himself and drew on his pipe. “I never heard of a more brilliant example of mismating. Last about a year, I should think.”
“You don’t know Polly. She can be anything she likes. And love does wonders.”
“Oh!” He almost dropped his pipe. “That’s an odd statement to come from you. What do you know about it?”
“My mind works. And I’ve seen a good deal of life, first and last.”
“Possibly. But the word ‘love’ sounds queer on your lips. And I don’t believe it’s anything but a word to you. I doubt if you have any conception of the meaning of it.”
He watched her intently. Most of her old inhibitions and prejudices had dissolved. She was more adaptable, more tolerant, more responsive, more what she might have been had destiny been kinder. But how deeply had the new life changed her? She was remarkably like the old Gita still.
She looked at him with a brilliant smile. “Some stylists say you should never use a long word when a short one will serve, nor a derivative if you can find a Saxon. Don’t agree with them, as I’ve always thought Swinburne’s ‘Chastelard’ as cold and dry as a bone. But hack words are convenient, that’s all, though one may be bored to death with them. I wonder the word ‘love’ has any meaning left in it. You’re so clever, I should think you’d invent a new vocabulary.”
“I write to be read. . . . I remember you once said that love was merely preference raised to a higher degree than like. But as your experience has grown perhaps you are willing to admit there are different degrees in the temperature of love itself?”
“Looks like it.” Gita drew her black brows together. “I merely accept the fact because I have to.”
Bylant had laid down his pipe and was twisting his short pointed beard. He eyed her speculatively, but not coldly. She looked warm and rosy and alluring in the deep chair, with her tumbled hair and bright eyes, and he would have given his new novel to kiss her; he half believed the time of his probation was shrinking. He had intended to wait for the woods and summer, but there was no harm in putting out an antenna or two.
“Don’t you ever feel you’re missing something?” he asked.
“I? What? Oh, you mean because I can’t make a fool of myself like other women. No, I don’t.” But she blushed unaccountably.
Eustace interpreted the blush as an uneasy response to a fact long ignored. “Gita!” he exclaimed, suddenly illuminated by a brilliant idea. “Let’s play a game. We can’t discuss intellectual subjects forever. We’d dry up. It’s time to strike a lighter note. Suppose we pretend we are not married and I’ve come wooing. And you are rather interested, but uncertain; willing to lead me on; curious to see if I could make an impression on your hard little heart. Pretty certain you’ll throw me over, but curious enough to give me a chance.”
Gita stared at him with mouth open. “What a perfectly ridiculous idea!”
“Not at all. Scientific matrimony. A science more married people would do well to study, and the keynote is variety. Besides, I’ve been working so long I feel in the mood for play.”
Gita dug the toe of her boot into the rug. “I don’t think I could play up. You see, I know I couldn’t fall in love with you.”
Bylant turned cold, but he answered steadily: “It would be a part of your end of the game to make yourself think you might. You have imagination, if you would consent to use it. You’re not nearly so matter-of-fact as you like to think.”
“I’m no actress, anyhow.”
“Every woman is an actress. As safe to bet on as that no woman knows the sort of man she’ll fall in love with. Look at Polly. Love, for that matter, is often due to the planting of a suggestion on one side or the other.”
“Polly says Dr. Pelham told her that love is——Oh, lord! Can I remember all that? Matter of over-secretion of hormones in cells next door to some kind of follicles.”
Eustace burst into a roar of laughter. “Sounds like old Geoff. Is that the sort of diet he feeds Polly on? She must be in love with him if she can stand it!”
“Polly’s up on endocrines. Every once in a while she and Elsie get going on the subject, but I always shut them up. Never did like the idea of knowing too much about my inwards. Don’t know which side my liver is on and always dodged physiology at school. Suppose it’s because I never was ill in my life. Besides, as far as I can make out, they wouldn’t take much interest in endocrines if one set didn’t happen to be stocked up with sex and made the others dance to its tune more or less. That’s enough for me. By the way, what do you think Elsie told me the other day—said she thought the time had come when I could stand it——” She paused abruptly and jerked her shoulders, her brows an unbroken and twisted line.
“I’d be interested to know.” His eyes narrowed to conceal a smile.
“I hate to repeat it and she made me so furious I could have thrown something at her. Said the reason I never could look like a boy was because I had no male cells in some place or other—that if I had, with the morbid psychology induced by my early experience and hatred of your sex, nothing could have ‘saved’ me. I wonder if people were always sex-mad!”
“Probably. Today they are more verbally interested because for the first time they know something of cause instead of merely taking effect for granted, and romanticizing it. But Elsie was quite right. You have an uncommonly balanced endocrine constitution and you may be thankful——”
“I prefer not to think about it.”
“Don’t. Forget it by all means.”
“I shall, now that I’ve unloaded it on you. . . . I should think that knowing too much would be the death of romance.”
“Quite. And far better for the race. But you’re the last person I should expect to set up a wail over the death of romance.”
“Not I. Jolly good thing it’s out of date. Merely made an observation. You’ve taught me to look all round a subject.”
“And you’re the aptest of pupils. But I’m tired of playing schoolmaster—for the present—and I should think that in time it would corrode the vanity of a beautiful and highly intelligent woman to sit constantly at the feet of a man. Do let us play for a while.”
Gita looked hard at him, but he returned her stare unflinchingly.
“You said yourself that love was a matter of suggestion, and you might come to fancy you were really in love with me,” she remarked. “That would be simply horrid and spoil everything.”
“My imagination never runs away with me even when I am writing fiction. And I assure you I shall never be in doubt of my true sentiments for a moment.”
Gita smiled. “You do play rather well. I’ve often watched you at parties.”
“Whole-heartedly.”
He looked prosaic enough with that beard and those rather plump cheeks. And if she could simulate interest in him it would help her to be noble with Polly. If Geoffrey Pelham looked on, so much the better. Another act in her play—more unreal than the stage itself!
“All right.” She caught her hat by the crown and stood up. “What’s the first move? How do I do it?”
“Leave it to me. Just be the flying princess for a time.”
She grinned widely. “Good title for a musical comedy. And I’ll like that rôle well enough.”