"That girl," his mother returned, "is innocence itself. Oh, Philip, dear, do marry her!"
"Well, I don't know. If her mother is behaving as sagely with her as you are with me the chances are that she won't let me. Besides, I don't know that I want to marry quite so much innocence."
"She is conscience incarnate," his mother uttered, perfervidly.
"You could put your very soul in her keeping."
"Then you would be out of a job, mother."
"Oh, I am not worthy of the job, my dear. I have always felt that. I am too complex, and sometimes I can't see the right alone, as she could."
Philip was silent a moment while he lost the personal point of view.
"I suspect we don't see the right when we see it alone. We ought to see the wrong, too."
"Ah, Philip, don't let your fancy go after that girl!"
"Miss Andrews? I thought--"
"Don't you be complex, my dear. You know I mean Miss Shirley. What has become of her, I wonder. I heard Miss Andrews asking you."
"I wasn't able to tell her. Do you want me to try telling you?"
"I would rather you never could."
Philip laughed sardonically. "Now, I shall forget Thursdays and all the other days, too. You are a very unwise parent, mother."
They laughed with each other at each other, and treated her enthusiasm for Miss Andrews as the joke it partly was. Mrs. Verrian did not follow him up about her idol, and a week or so later she was able to affect a decent surprise when he came in at the end of an afternoon and declined the cup of tea she proposed on the ground that he had been taking a cup of tea with the Andrewses. "You have really been there?"
"Didn't you expect me to keep my promise?"
"But I was afraid I had put a stumbling-block in the way."
"Oh, I found I could turn the consciousness you created in me into literary material, and so I was rather eager to go. I have got a point for my new story out of it. I shall have my fellow suffer all I didn't suffer in meeting the girl he knows his mother wants him to marry. I got on very well with those ladies. Mrs. Andrews is the mother of innocence, but she isn't innocence. She managed to talk of my story without asking about the person who wanted to anticipate the conclusion. That was what you call complex. She was insincere; it was the only thing she wanted to talk about."
"I don't believe it, Philip. But what did Miss Andrews talk about?"
"Well, she is rather an optimistic conscience. She talked about books and plays that some people do not think are quite proper. I have a notion that, where the point involved isn't a fact of her own experience, she is not very severe about it. You think that would be quite safe for me?"
"Philip, I don't like your ****** fun of her!"
"Oh, she wasn't insipid; she was only limpid. I really like her, and, as for reverencing her, of course I feel that in a way she is sacred."
He added, after a breath, " Too sacred. We none of us can expect to marry Eve before the Fall now; perhaps we have got over wanting to."
"You are very perverse, my dear. But you will get over that."
"Don't take away my last defence, mother."
Verrian began to go rather regularly to the Andrews house, or, at least, he was accused of doing it by Miss Macroyd when, very irregularly, he went one day to see her. "How did you know it?" he asked.
"I didn't say I knew it. I only wished to know it. Now I am satisfied.
I met another friend of yours on Sunday." She paused for him to ask who; but he did not ask. "I see you are dying to know what friend: Mr. Bushwick."
"Oh, he's a good-fellow. I wonder I don't run across him."
"Perhaps that's because you never call on Miss Shirley." Miss Macroyd waited for this to take effect, but he kept a glacial surface towards her, and she went on:
"They were walking together in the park at noon. I suppose they had been to church together."
Verrian manifested no more than a polite interest in the fact. He managed so well that he confirmed Miss Macroyd in a tacit conjecture.
She went on: " Miss Shirley was looking quite blooming for her. But so was he, for that matter. Why don't you ask if they inquired for you?"
"I thought you would tell me without."
"I will tell you if he did. He was very cordial in his inquiries; and I had to pretend, to gratify him, that you were very well. I implied that you came here every Tuesday, but your Thursdays were dedicated to Miss Andrews."
"You are a clever woman, Miss Macroyd. I should never have thought of so much to say on such an uninteresting subject. And Miss Shirley showed no curiosity?"
"Ah, she is a clever woman, too. She showed the prettiest kind of curiosity--so perfectly managed. She has a studio--I don't know just how she puts it to use--with a painter girl in one of those studio apartment houses on the West Side: The Veronese, I believe. You must go and see her; I'll let you have next Tuesday off; Tuesday's her day, too."
"You are generosity itself, Miss Macroyd."
"Yes, there's nothing mean about me," she returned, in slang rather older than she ordinarily used. "If you're not here next Tuesday I shall know where you are."
"Then I must take a good many Tuesdays off, unless I want to give myself away."
"Oh, don't do that, Mr. Verrian! Please! Or else I can't let you have any Tuesday off."
