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Page 108
Soft-heartedness was Aline's weakness. She had never clearly
recognized it, but it had been partly pity that had induced her
to accept Freddie; he had seemed so downtrodden and sorry for
himself during those Autumn days when they had first met.
Prudence warned her that strange things might happen if once she
allowed herself to pity George Emerson.
The silence lengthened. Aline could find nothing to say. In her
present mood there was danger in speech.
"We have known each other so long," said Emerson, "and I have
told you so often that I love you, we have come to make almost a
joke of it, as though we were playing some game. It just happens
that that is our way--to laugh at things; but I am going to say
it once again, even though it has come to be a sort of catch
phrase. I love you! I'm reconciled to the fact that I am done
for, out of the running, and that you are going to marry somebody
else; but I am not going to stop loving you.
"It isn't a question of whether I should be happier if I forgot
you. I can't do it. It's just an impossibility--and that's all
there is to it. Whatever I may be to you, you are part of me, and
you always will be part of me. I might just as well try to go on
living without breathing as living without loving you."
He stopped and straightened himself.
"That's all! I don't want to spoil a perfectly good Spring
afternoon for you by pulling out the tragic stop. I had to say
all that; but it's the last time. It shan't occur again. There
will be no tragedy when I step into the train to-morrow. Is there
any chance that you might come and see me off?"
Aline nodded.
"You will? That will be splendid! Now I'll go and pack and break
it to my host that I must leave him. I expect, it will be news to
him to learn that I am here. I doubt if he knows me by sight."
Aline stood where he had left her, leaning on the balustrade. In
the fullness of time there came to her the recollection she had
promised Freddie that shortly after luncheon she would sit with
him.
* * *
The Honorable Freddie, draped in purple pyjamas and propped up
with many pillows, was lying in bed, reading Gridley Quayle,
Investigator. Aline's entrance occurred at a peculiarly poignant
moment in the story and gave him a feeling of having been brought
violently to earth from a flight in the clouds. It is not often
an author has the good fortune to grip a reader as the author of
Gridley Quayle gripped Freddie.
One of the results of his absorbed mood was that he greeted Aline
with a stare of an even glassier quality than usual. His eyes
were by nature a trifle prominent; and to Aline, in the
overstrung condition in which her talk with George Emerson had
left her, they seemed to bulge at her like a snail's. A man
seldom looks his best in bed, and to Aline, seeing him for the
first time at this disadvantage, the Honorable Freddie seemed
quite repulsive. It was with a feeling of positive panic that she
wondered whether he would want her to kiss him.
Freddie made no such demand. He was not one of your demonstrative
lovers. He contented himself with rolling over in bed and
dropping his lower jaw.
"Hello, Aline!"
Aline sat down on the edge of the bed.
"Well, Freddie?"
Her betrothed improved his appearance a little by hitching up his
jaw. As though feeling that would be too extreme a measure, he
did not close his mouth altogether; but he diminished the abyss.
The Honorable Freddie belonged to the class of persons who move
through life with their mouths always restfully open.
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