She gazed at him uncertainly. She felt him going --and going finally. She seized him with desperate fingers, cried: "I AM content. Oh, Fred--don't frighten me this way!"
He smiled satirically. "Are you afraid of the scandal--because everything for the wedding has gone so far?"
"How can you think that!" cried she--perhaps too vigorously, a woman would have thought.
"What else is there for me to think? You certainly haven't shown any consideration for me."
"But you told me yourself that you were false to me."
"Really? When?"
She forgot her fear in a gush of rage rising from sudden realization of what she was doing--of how leniently and weakly and without pride she was dealing with this man. "Didn't you admit----"
"Pardon me," said he, and his manner might well have calmed the wildest tempest of anger. "I did not admit. I never admit. I leave that to people of the sort who explain and excuse and apologize. I simply told you I was paying the expenses of a family named Hallowell."
"But WHY should you do it, Fred?"
His smile was gently satirical. "I thought Tetlow told you why."
"I don't believe him!"
"Then why this excitement?"
One could understand how the opposition witnesses dreaded facing him. "I don't know just why," she stammered. "It seemed to me you were admitting--I mean, you were confirming what that man accused you of."
"And of what did he accuse me? I might say, of what do YOU accuse me?" When she remained silent he went on: "I am trying to be reasonable, Josephine.
I am trying to keep my temper."
The look in her eyes--the fear, the timidity--was a startling revelation of character--of the cowardice with which love undermines the strongest nature. "I know I've been foolish and incoherent, Fred," she pleaded. "But--I love you! And you remember how I always was afraid of that girl."
"Just what do you wish to know?"
"Nothing, dear--nothing. I am not sillily jealous.
I ought to be admiring you for your generosity--your charity."
"It's neither the one nor the other," said he with exasperating deliberateness.
She quivered. "Then WHAT is it?" she cried.
"You are driving me crazy with your evasions."
Pleadingly, "You must admit they ARE evasions."
He buttoned his coat in tranquil preparation to depart. She instantly took alarm. "I don't mean that.
It's my fault, not asking you straight out. Fred, tell me--won't you? But if you are too cross with me, then--don't tell me." She laughed nervously, hiding her submission beneath a seeming of mocking exaggeration of humility. "I'll be good. I'll behave."
A man who admired her as a figure, a man who liked her, a man who had no feeling for her beyond the general human feeling of wishing well pretty nearly everybody--in brief, any man but one who had loved her and had gotten over it would have deeply pitied and sympathized with her. Fred Norman said, his look and his tone coolly calm:
"I am backing Mr. Hallowell in a company for which he is doing chemical research work. We are hatching eggs, out of the shell, so to speak. Also we are aging and rejuvenating arthropods and the like. So far we have declared no dividends. But we have hopes."
She gave a hysterical sob of relief. "Then it's only business--not the girl at all!"
"Oh, yes, it's the girl, too," replied he. "She's an officer of the company. In fact, it was to make a place for her that I went into the enterprise originally."
With an engaging air of frankness he inquired, "Anything more?"
She was gazing soberly, almost somberly, into the fire. "You'll not be offended if I ask you one question?"
"Certainly not."
"Is there anything between you and--her?"
"You mean, am I having an affair with her?"
She hung her head, but managed to make a slight nod of assent.
He laughed. "No." He laughed again. "No--not thus far, my dear." He laughed a third time, with still stronger and stranger mockery. "She congratulated me on my engagement with a sincerity that would have piqued a man who was interested in her."
"Will you forgive me?" Josephine said. "What I've just been feeling and saying and putting you through--it's beneath both of us. I suppose a woman --no woman--can help being nasty where another woman is concerned."
With his satirical good-humored smile, "I don't in the least blame you."
"And you'll not think less of me for giving way to a thing so vulgar?"
He kissed her with a carelessness that made her wince But she felt that she deserved it--and was grateful. He said: "Why don't you go over and see for yourself? No doubt Tetlow gave you the address --and no doubt you have remembered it."
She colored and hastily turned her head. "Don't punish me," she pleaded.
"Punish you? What nonsense! . . . Do you want me to take you over? The laboratory would interest you--and Miss Hallowell is lovelier than ever. She has an easier life now. Office work wears on women terribly."
Josephine looked at him with a beautiful smile of love and trust. "You wish to be sure I'm cured. Well, can't you see that I am?"
"I don't see why you should be. I've said nothing one way or the other."
She laughed gayly. "You can't tempt me. I'm really cured. I think the only reason I had the attack was because Mr. Tetlow so evidently believed he was speaking the truth."
"No doubt he did think he was. I'm sure, in the same circumstances, I'd think of anyone else just what he thinks of me."
"Then why do you do it, Fred?" urged she with ill-concealed eagerness. "It isn't fair to the girl, is it?"
"No one but you and Tetlow knows I'm doing it."
"You're mistaken there, dear. Tetlow says a great many people down town are talking about it--that they say you go almost every day to Jersey City to see her.
He accuses you of having ruined her reputation. He says she is quite innocent. He blames the whole thing upon you."
Norman, standing with arms folded upon his broad chest, was gazing thoughtfully into the fire.
"You don't mind my telling you these things?" she said anxiously. "Of course, I know they are lies----"
"So everyone is talking about it," interrupted he, so absorbed that he had not heard her.
