They sat silent till at length she gently took up the argument. "As the eldest, you know, I'm bound to consider these things. Women are such a burden. Jim does what he can for mother, but with his own children to provide for it isn't very much. You see, we're all poor together.""Your aunt isn't.She might help your mother." "She does--in her own way.""Exactly--that's the rich relation all over! You may be miserable in any way you like, but if you're to be happy you've got to be so in her way--and in her old gowns."
"I could be very happy in Aunt Virginia's old gowns," Miss Trent interposed.
"Abroad, you mean?"
"I mean wherever I felt that I was helping.And my going abroad willhelp."
"Of course--I see that. And I see your considerateness in putting its advantages negatively.""Negatively?"
"In dwelling simply on what the going will take you from, not on what it will bring you to. It means a lot to a woman, of course, to get away from a life like this." He summed up in a disparaging glance the background of indigent furniture. "The question is how you'll like coming back to it."She seemed to accept the full consequences of his thought. "I only know I don't like leaving it."He flung back sombrely, "You don't even put it conditionally then?" Her gaze deepened."On what?"He stood up and walked across the room. Then he came back and paused before her. "On the alternative of marrying me."The slow color--even her blushes seemed deliberate--rose to her lower lids; her lips stirred, but the words resolved themselves into a smile and she waited.
He took another turn, with the thwarted step of the man whose nervous exasperation escapes through his muscles.
"And to think that in fifteen years I shall have a big practice!" Her eyes triumphed for him."In less!""The cursed irony of it! What do I care for the man I shall be then? It's slaving one's life away for a stranger!" He took her hands abruptly. "You'll go to Cannes, I suppose, or Monte Carlo? I heard Hollingsworth say to-day that he meant to take his yacht over to the Mediterranean--"She released herself."If you think that--""I don't. I almost wish I did. It would be easier, I mean." He broke off incoherently. "I believe your Aunt Virginia does, though. She somehow connotes Hollingsworth and the Mediterranean." He caught her hands again. "Alexa--if we could manage a little hole somewhere out of town?""Could we?" she sighed, half yielding.
"In one of those places where they make jokes about the mosquitoes,"he pressed her."Could you get on with one servant?" "Could you get on without varnished boots?" "Promise me you won't go, then!""What are you thinking of, Stephen?"
"I don't know," he stammered, the question giving unexpected form to his intention. "It's all in the air yet, of course; but I picked up a tip the other day--""You're not speculating?" she cried, with a kind of superstitious terror. "Lord, no.This is a sure thing--I almost wish it wasn't; I mean if Ican work it--" He had a sudden vision of the comprehensiveness of the temptation. If only he had been less sure of Dinslow! His assurance gave the situation the base element of safety.
"I don't understand you," she faltered.
"Trust me, instead!" he adjured her, with sudden energy; and turning on her abruptly, "If you go, you know, you go free," he concluded.
She drew back, paling a little."Why do you make it harder for me?" "To make it easier for myself," he retorted.
