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Page 102

Stewart groaned. Peter closed Marie's American trunk of which she
had been so proud, and coming over looked down at the injured
man.

"Don't you think you'd better tell the girl all about it?"

"No," doggedly.

"I know, of course, it wouldn't be easy, but--you can't get away
with it, Stewart. That's one way of looking at it. There's
another."

"What's that?"

"Starting with a clean slate. If she's the sort you want to
marry, and not a prude, she'll understand, not at first, but
after she gets used to it."

"She wouldn't understand in a thousand years."

"Then you'd better not marry her. You know, Stewart, I have an
idea that women imagine a good many pretty rotten things about
us, anyhow. A sensible girl would rather know the truth and be
done with it. What a man has done with his life before a
girl--the right girl--comes into it isn't a personal injury to
her, since she wasn't a part of his life then. You know what I
mean. But she has a right to know it before she chooses."

"How many would choose under those circumstances?" he jibed.

Peter smiled. "Quite a few," he said cheerfully. "It's a wrong
system, of course; but we can get a little truth out of it."

"You can't get away with it" stuck in Stewart's mind for several
days. It was the one thing Peter said that did stick. And before
Stewart had recovered enough to be up and about he had made up
his mind to tell Anita. In his mind he made quite a case for
himself; he argued the affair against his conscience and came out
victorious.

Anita's party had broken up. The winter sports did not compare,
they complained, with St. Moritz. They disliked German cooking.
Into the bargain the weather was not good; the night's snows
turned soft by midday; and the crowds that began to throng the
hotels were solid citizens, not the fashionables of the Riviera.
Anita's arm forbade her traveling. In the reassembling of the
party she went to the Kurhaus in the valley below the pension
with one of the women who wished to take the baths.

It was to the Kurhaus, then, that Stewart made his first
excursion after the accident. He went to dinner. Part of the
chaperon's treatment called for an early retiring hour, which was
highly as he had wished it and rather unnerving after all. A man
may decide that a dose of poison is the remedy for all his
troubles, but he does not approach his hour with any hilarity.
Stewart was a stupid dinner guest, ate very little, and looked
haggard beyond belief when the hour came for the older woman to
leave.

He did not lack courage however. It was his great asset, physical
and mental rather than moral, but courage nevertheless. The
evening was quiet, and they elected to sit on the balcony outside
Anita's sitting room, the girl swathed in white furs and leaning
back in her steamer chair.

Below lay the terrace of the Kurhaus, edged with evergreen trees.
Beyond and far below that was the mountain village, a few
scattered houses along a frozen stream. The townspeople retired
early; light after light was extinguished, until only one in the
priest's house remained. A train crept out of one tunnel and into
another, like a glowing worm crawling from burrow to burrow.

The girl felt a change in Stewart. During the weeks he had known
her there had been a curious restraint in his manner to her.
There were times when an avowal seemed to tremble on his lips,
when his eyes looked into hers with the look no women ever
mistakes; the next moment he would glance away, his face would
harden. They were miles apart. And perhaps the situation had
piqued the girl. Certainly it had lost nothing for her by its
unusualness.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Sun 28th Dec 2025, 11:42

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart