"You know it is pretty cold here. They can say all they want to about the cold and all that out in Minnesota, but, really, the humidity----"

"Rats; it isn't so very cold, not if you walk fast."

"Well, maybe; anyway, I guess it would be nice to explore some."

"All right; let's."

"I do think people are so conventional. Don't you?" said Gertie, while Carl discerningly stole one of Ray's best cigars out of the humidor.

"Awfully conventional. Not going out for good long walks. Dorothy Gibbons and I did find the nicest place to walk, up in Bronx Park, and there's such a dear little restaurant, right on the water; of course the water was frozen, but it seemed quite wild, you know, for New York. We might take that walk, whenever you'd like to."

"Oh--Bronx Park--gee! Gertie, I can't get up much excitement over that. I want to get away from this tame city, and forget all about offices and parks and people and everything like that."

"N-n-n-now!" she clucked in a patronizing way. "We mustn't ask New York to give us wilderness, you know! I'm afraid that would be a little too much to ask of it! Don't you think so yourself!"

Carl groaned to himself, "I won't be mothered!"

He was silent. His silence was positively noisy. He wanted her to hear it. But it is difficult to be sulky with a bland, plump woman of thirty who remembers your childhood trick of biting your nails, and glances up at you from her embroidery, occasionally patting her brown silk hair or smoothing her brown silk waist in a way which implies a good digestion, a perfect memory of the morning's lesson of her Sunday-school cla.s.s, and a mild disbelief in men as anything except relatives, providers, card-players, and nurslings. Carl gave up the silence-cure.

He hummed about the room, running over the advertising pages of magazines, discussing Plato fraternities, and waiting till it should be time to go home. Their conversation kept returning to the fraternities. There wasn't much else to talk about. Before to-night they had done complete justice to all other topics--Joralemon, Bennie Rusk, Joe Jordan's engagement, Adelaide Benner, and symphony concerts.

Gertie embroidered, patted her hair, smoothed her waist, looked cheerful, rocked, and spoke; embroidered, patted her hair, smoothed her sleeve, looked amiable, rocked, and spoke--embroidered, pat----

At a quarter to ten Carl gave himself permission to go. Said he: "I'll have to get on the job pretty early to-morrow. Not much taking it easy here in New York, the way you can in Joralemon, eh? So I guess I'd better----"

"I'm sorry you have to go so early." Gertie carefully stuck her embroidery needle into her doily, rolled up the doily meticulously, laid it down on the center-table, straightened the pile of magazines which Carl had deranged, and rose. "But I'm glad you could drop up this evening. Come up any time you haven't anything better to do.

Oh--what about our tramp? If you know some place that is better than Bronx Park, we might try it."

"Why--uh--yes--why, sure; we'll have to, some time."

"And, Carl, you're coming up to have your Christmas turkey with us, aren't you?"

"I'd like to, a lot, but darn it, I've accepted 'nother invitation."

That was absolutely untrue, and Carl was wondering why he had lied, when the storm broke.

Gertie's right arm, affectedly held out from the elbow, the hand drooping, in the att.i.tude of a refined hostess saying good-by, dropped stiffly to her side. Slowly she thrust out both arms, shoulder-high on either side, with her fists clenched; her head back and slightly on one side; her lips open in agony--the position of crucifixion. Her eyes looked up, unseeing; then closed tight. She drew a long breath, like a sigh that was too weary for sound, and her plump, placid left hand clutched her panting breast, while her right arm dropped again.

All the pa.s.sion of tragedy seemed to shriek in her hopeless gesture, and her silence was a wail m.u.f.fled and despairing.

Carl stared, twisting his watch-chain with nervous fingers, wanting to flee.

It was raw woman, with all the proprieties of Joralemon and St.

Orgul's cut away, who spoke, her voice constantly rising:

"Oh, Carl--Carl! Oh, why, why, why! Oh, why don't you want me to go walking with you, now? Why don't you want to go anywhere with me any more? Have I displeased you? Oh, I didn't mean to! Why do I bore you so?"

"Oh--Gertie--oh--gee!--thunder!" whimpered a dismayed youth. A more mature Hawk Ericson struggled to life and soothed her: "Gertie, honey, I didn't mean----Listen----"

But she moaned on, standing rigid, her left hand on her breast, her eyes red, moist, frightened, fixed: "We always played together, and I thought here in the city we could be such good friends, with all the different new things to do together--why, I wanted us to go to Chinatown and theaters, and I would have been so glad to pay my share.

I've just been waiting and hoping you would ask me, and I wanted us to play and see--oh! so many different new things together--it would have been so sweet, so sweet----We were good friends at first, and then you--you didn't want to come here any more and----Oh, I couldn't help seeing it; more and more and more and _more_ I've been seeing it; but I didn't want to see it; but now I can't fool myself any more. I was so lonely till you came to-night, and when you spoke about tramping----And then it seemed like you just went away from me again."

"Why, Gertie, you didn't seem----"

"----and long ago I really saw it, the day we walked in the Park and I was wicked about trying to make you call me 'Eltruda'--oh, Carl dear, indeed you needn't call me that or anything you don't like--and I tried to make you say I had a temperament. And about Adelaide and all.

And you went away and I thought you would come back to me that evening--oh, I wanted you to come, so much, and you didn't even 'phone--and I waited up till after midnight, hoping you would 'phone, I kept thinking surely you would, and you never did, you never did; and I listened and listened for the 'phone to ring, and every time there was a noise----But it never was you. It never rang at all...."

She dropped back in the Morris chair, her eyes against the cushion, her hair disordered, both her hands gripping the left arm of the chair, her sobs throat-catching and long--throb-throb-throb in the death-still air.

Carl stared at her, praying for a chance to escape. Then he felt an instinct prompting him to sob with her. Pity, embarra.s.sment, disgust, mingled with his alarm. He became amazed that Gertie, easy-going Gertie Cowles, had any pa.s.sion at all; and indignant that it was visited upon himself.

But he had to help. He moved to her chair and, squatting boyishly on its arm, stroked her hair, begging: "Gertie, Gertie, I did mean to come up, that night. Indeed I did, honey. I would have come up, but I met some friends--couldn't break away from them all evening." A chill ran between his shoulder-blades. It was a shock to the pride he took in Ruth's existence. The evening in question had found Ruth for him!

It seemed as though Gertie had dared with shrewish shrillness to intrude upon his beautiful hour. But pity came to him again. Stroking her hair, he went urgently on: "Don't you see? Why, blessed, I wouldn't hurt you for anything! Just to-night--why, you remember, first thing, I wanted us to plan for some walks; reason I didn't say more about it was, I didn't know as you'd want to, much. Why, Gertie, _anybody_ would be proud to play with you. You know so much about concerts and all sorts of stuff. Anybody'd be proud to!" He wound up with a fict.i.tious cheerfulness. "We'll have some good long hikes together, heh?... It's better now, isn't it, kiddy? You're just tired to-night. Has something been worrying you? Tell old Carl all about---"

She wiped her tears away with the adorable gesture of a child trying to be good, and like a child's was her glance, bewildered, hurt, yet trusting, as she said in a small, shy voice: "Would folks really be proud to play with me?... We did use to have some dear times, didn't we! Do you remember how we found some fool's gold, and we thought it was gold and hid it on the sh.o.r.e of the lake, and we were going to buy a ship? Do you remember? You haven't forgotten all our good times, while you've been so famous, have you?"

"Oh no, no!"

"But why don't--Carl, why don't you--why can't you care more now?"

"Why, I do care! You're one of the bulliest pals I have, you and Ray."

"And Ray!"

She flung his hand away and sat bolt up, angry.

Carl retired to a chair beside the Morris chair, fidgeting. "Can you beat it! Is this Gertie and me?" he inquired in a parenthesis in his heart. For a second, as she stared haughtily at him, he spitefully recalled the fact that Gertie had once discarded him for a glee-club dentist. But he submerged the thought and listened with a rather forced big-brother air as she repented of her anger and went on:

"Carl, don't you understand how hard it is for a woman to forget her pride this way?" The hauteur of being one of the elite of Joralemon again flashed out. "Maybe if you'll think real hard you'll remember I used to could get you to be so kind and talk to me without having to beg you so hard. Why, I'd been to New York and known the _nicest_ people before you'd ever stirred a foot out of Joralemon! You were----Oh, please forgive me, Carl; I didn't mean to be snippy; I just don't know what to think of myself--and I did used to think I was a lady, and here I am practically up and telling you and----"

She leaned from her chair toward his, and took his hand, touching it, finding its hard, bony places and the delicate white hollows of flesh between his coa.r.s.ened yet shapely fingers; tracing a scarce-seen vein on the back; exploring a well-beloved yet ill-known country. Carl was unspeakably disconcerted. He was thinking that, to him, Gertie was set aside from the number of women who could appeal physically, quite as positively as though she were some old aunt who had for twenty years seemed to be the same adult, plump, uninteresting age. Gertie's solid flesh, the monotony of her voice, the unimaginative fixity of her round cheeks, a certain increasing slackness about her waist, even the faint, stuffy domestic scent of her--they all expressed to him her lack of humor and fancy and venturesomeness. She was crystallized in his mind as a good friend with a plain soul and sisterly tendencies.

Awkwardly he said:

"You mustn't talk like that.... Gee! Gertie, we'll be in a regular 'scene,' if you don't watch out!... We're just good friends, and you can always bank on me, same as I would on you."

"But why must we be just friends?"

He wanted to be rude, but he was patient. Mechanically stroking her hair again, leaning forward most uncomfortably from his chair, he stammered: "Oh, I've been----Oh, you know; I've wandered around so much that it's kind of put me out of touch with even my best friends, and I don't know where I'm at. I couldn't make any alliances----Gee!

that sounds affected. I mean: I've got to sort of start in now all over, finding where I'm at."

"But why must we be just friends, then?"

"Listen, child. It's hard to tell; I guess I didn't know till now what it does mean, but there's a girl----Wait; listen. There's a girl--at first I simply thought it was good fun to know her, but now, Lord!

Gertie, you'd think I was pretty sentimental if I told you what I think of her. G.o.d! I want to see her so much! Right now! I haven't let myself know how much I wanted her. She's everything. She's sister and chum and wife and everything."

"It's----But I am glad for you. Will you believe that? And perhaps you understand how I felt, now. I'm very sorry I let myself go. I hope you will----Oh, please go now."

He sprang up, only too ready to go. But first he kissed her hand with a courtly reverence, and said, with a sweetness new to him: "Dear, will you forgive me if I've ever hurt you? And will you believe how very, very much I honor you? And when I see you again there won't be--we'll both forget all about to-night, won't we? We'll just be the old Carl and Gertie again. Tell me to come when----"

"Yes. I will. Goodnight."