XIII

VERNON found Amelia in one of the hotel parlors, seated on a sofa by a window. She was resting her chin in her hand and looking down into Capitol Avenue.

"Amelia," he said, bending over her. "What is it? tell me."

He sat down beside her, and sought to engage one of her hands in his own, but she withdrew it, and pressed it with the other and the handkerchief in both, to her lips and chin. Vernon glanced about the respectable parlors, maintained in instant readiness for anybody that might happen along with his little comedy or his little tragedy. She continued to look obdurately out of the window.

"Amelia," he said, "aren't you going to speak to me? Tell me what I have done."

Still there came no answer. He flung himself back on the sofa helplessly.

"Well," he said, "I don't know what it all means. I've tried to fathom it in the last hour, but it's too deep for me; I give it up." He flung out his hands to ill.u.s.trate his abandonment.

"G.o.d knows," he suddenly exclaimed, "I was only trying to do something worthy-for your sake!"

"Please don't swear, Morley," Amelia said.

He looked up swiftly.

"Well-" he began explosively, but he didn't continue. He relapsed into a moody silence. He stretched his legs out before him in an ungainly att.i.tude, with his hands plunged deep in his trousers' pockets. Then he knitted his brows and tried to think.

"I suppose," he said, as if he were thinking aloud, "that you expect some explanation, some apology."

"Oh, not at all," she said lightly, in the most musical tone she could command.

"Very well," he said, "I wouldn't know where to begin if you did. I'm sure I'm not aware of having-"

She began to hum softly, to herself, as it were, some tuneless air. He remembered that it was a way she had when she was angry. It was intended to show the last and utmost personal unconcern. In such circ.u.mstances the tune was apt to be an improvisation and was never melodious.

Sometimes it made her easier to deal with, sometimes harder; he could never tell.

"I don't exactly see what we are here for," he ventured, stealing a look at her. She had no reply. He fidgeted a moment and then began drumming with his fingers on the arm of the sofa.

"Please don't do that," she said.

He stopped suddenly.

"If you would be good enough, _kind_ enough," he said it sarcastically, "to indicate, to suggest even, what I am to do-to say."

"I'm sure I can't," she said. "You came. I presumed you had something to say to me."

"Well, I have something to say to you," Vernon went on impetuously. "Why didn't you answer my letters? Why have you treated me this way? That's what I want to know."

He leaned toward her. He was conscious of two emotions, two pa.s.sions, struggling within him, one of anger, almost hate, the other of love, and strangely enough they had a striking similarity in their effect upon him. He felt like reproaching, yet he knew that was not the way, and he made a desperate struggle to conquer himself.

He tried to look into her face, but she only turned farther away from him.

"I've spent the most miserable week I ever knew, doomed to stay here, unable to get away to go to you, and with this fight on my hands!"

"You seemed to be having a fairly good time," the girl said.

"Now, Amelia, look here," said Vernon, "let's not act like children any longer; let's not have anything so foolish and little between us."

His tone made his words a plea, but it plainly had no effect upon her, for she did not answer. They sat there, then, in silence.

"Why didn't you write?" Vernon demanded after a little while. He looked at her, and she straightened up and her eyes flashed.

"Why didn't I write!" she exclaimed. "What was I to write, pray? Were not your letters full of this odious Maria Burlaps Greene? And as if that were not enough, weren't the papers full of you two? And that speech-oh, that speech-that Portia and Helen, and 'I fill this cup to one made up,' ah, it was sickening!" She flirted away again.

"But, darling," Vernon cried, "listen-you misunderstood-I meant all that for _you_, didn't you understand?"

She stirred.

"Didn't you see? Why, dearest, I thought that when you read the papers you'd be the proudest girl alive!"

Her lip curled.

"I read the papers," she said, and then added, significantly, "this once, anyway."

"Well, you certainly don't intend to hold me responsible for what the papers say, do you?"

She resumed her old att.i.tude, her elbow on the arm of the sofa, her chin in her hand, and looked out the window. And she began to hum again.

"And then," he pressed on, "to come down here and not even let me know; why you even called me _Mister_ Vernon when I came into the dining-room."

"Yes," she exclaimed, suddenly wheeling about, "I _saw_ you come into the dining-room this morning!" Her eyes grew dark and flashed.

He regretted, on the instant.

"I saw you!" she went on. "I saw you rush up to that Maria Burlaps Greene woman, and-oh, it was horrid!"

"Her name isn't Burlaps, dear," said Vernon.

"How do you know her name, I'd like to know!" She put her hands to her face. He saw her tears.

"Amelia," he said masterfully, "if you don't stop that! Listen-we've got to get down to business."

She hastily brushed the tears from her eyes. She was humming once more, and tapping the toe of her boot on the carpet, though she was not tapping it in time to her tune.

"Why did you come down without letting me know?" Vernon went on; but still she was silent.

"You might at least have given me-"

"Warning?" she said, with a keen inflection.

"Amelia!" he said, and his tone carried a rebuke.