Madcap. George Gibbs
touch or return his pressure.
"Yes," she said coolly, "I think I have."
"Have I offended you?"
"No. Not at all—only disappointed me a little. I had such nice plans for you."
He laughed.
"Olga, you're the most wonderful woman in the world. I don't deserve your friendship. But I did want to loaf—I worked pretty hard last winter."
"Oh, you needn't evade me. I can't make you like my friends. But I hoped you wouldn't disappoint them. Mrs. Berkley Hammond, the Gormeley twins, and now Hermia—"
"Miss Challoner!" in surprise. "Her portrait! I thought she disapproved of my method."
She smiled. "Oh, you don't know Hermia as I do. One is never more certain in one's judgment of her than when one thinks one is wrong." She gave a short laugh. "At any rate, she said she was going to speak to you about it."
"That's curious," he muttered.
"Will you do it?" she asked.
He looked away toward the terrace.
"I hadn't planned to do any portraits until Fall."
"Doesn't she interest you?" she continued quickly.
"She's paintable—it would be profitable, of course—"
"You're evading again."
"Yes, she interests me," he said frankly. "She's clever, amiable, hospitable—and quite irresponsible. But then she would want to be 'pretty.' I'm afraid I should only make her childish."
"Oh, she's prepared for the worst. You had better paint her. It will do you a lot of good. Besides, you paint better when you're a little contemptuous."
"I'm not sure that I could take that attitude toward Miss Challoner," he said slowly. "She's too good for the crowd she runs with, that's sure, and—"
"Thanks," laughed Olga. "You always had a neat turn for flattery."
But he didn't laugh.
"I mean it," he went on warmly. "She's too good for them—and so are you. Mrs. Renshaw, a woman notorious even in New York, who at the age of thirty has already changed husbands three times, drained them and thrown them aside as one would a rotten orange; Hilda Ashhurst who plays cards for a living and knows how to win; Crosby Downs, a merciless voluptuary who makes a god of his belly; Archie Westcott, the man Friday of every Western millionaire with social ambitions who comes to New York—a man who lives by his social connections, his wits and his looks; Carol Gouverneur, his history needn't be repeated—"
"Nor mine—" finished Olga quietly, "you needn't go on." The calmness of her tone only brought its bitterness into higher relief. Markham stopped, turned and caught both her hands in his.
"No, not yours, Olga. God knows I didn't mean that. You're not their kind, soulless, cynical, selfish and narrow social parasite who poison what they fee don and live in the idleness that better men and women have bought for them. Call them your crowd if you like. I know better. You've only taken people as you've found them—taken life as it was planned for you—moved along the line of least resistance because you'd never been taught that there was any other way to go. In Europe you never had a chance to learn—"
"That's it," she broke in passionately, "I never had a chance—not a chance."
Her fingers clutched his and then quickly released them.
"Oh, what's the use?" she went on in a stifled tone. "Why couldn't you have let me live on, steeped in my folly? It's too late for me to change. I can't. I'm pledged. If I gamble, keep late hours, and do all the things that this set does it's because if I didn't I should die of thinking. What does it matter to any one but me?"
She stopped and rose with a sudden gesture of anger.
"Don't preach, John. I'm not in the humor for it—not to-night—do you hear?"
He looked up at her in surprise. One of her hands was clenched on the balustrade and her dark eyes regarded him scornfully.
"I've made you angry? I'm sorry," he said.
The tense lines of her figure suddenly relaxed as she leaned against the pergola and then laughed up at the sky.
"Would you preach to the stars, John Markham? They're a merry congregation. They're laughing at you—as I am. A sermon by moonlight with only the stars and a scoffer to listen!"
Her mockery astonished and bewildered him. His indictment of those with whom she affiliated was no new thing in their conversations, and he knew that what he had said was true.
"I'm sorry I spoke," he muttered.
She laughed at him again and threw out her arms toward the moonlit sea.
"What a night for the moralities—for the ashes of repentance! I ask a man into the rose-garden to make love to me and he preaches to me instead—preaches to me! of the world, the flesh and the devil, par exemple! Was ever a pretty woman in a more humiliating position!"
She approached him again and leaned over him, the strands of her hair brushing his temples, her voice whispering mockingly just at his ear.
"Oh, la la! You make such a pretty lover, John. If I could only paint you in your sackcloth and ashes, I should die in content. What is it like, mon ami, to feel like moralizing in a rose-garden by moonlight? What do they tell you—the roses? Of the dull earth from which they come? Don't they whisper of the kisses of the night winds, of the drinking of the dew—of the mad joy of living—the sweetness of dying? Or don't they say anything to you at all—except that they are merely roses, John?"
She brushed the blossom in her fingers lightly across his lips and sprang away from him. But it was too late. She had gone too far and she realized it in a moment; for thought she eluded him once, he caught her in his arms and kissed her roughly on the lips.
"You'd mock at me, would you?" he cried.
She struggled in his arms and then lay inert. She deserved this revenge she knew, but not the carelessness of these kisses of retribution, each of them merciless with the burden of her awakening.
"Let me go, John," she said faintly. "You must not—"
"Not yet. I'm no man of stone. Can you scoff now?"
"No, no. Let me go. I've paid you well and you—O God! you've paid me, too. Let me go."
"Not until you kiss me."
"No—not that."
"Why?" he whispered.
"No—never that! Oh, the damage you have done!"
"I'll repair it—"
"No. You can't bring the dead to life——our friendship——it was so clean——Let me go, do you hear?"
But he only laughed at her.
"You'll kiss me—"
"Never!"
"You shall—"
"Never!"
He raised her face to his. She quivered under his touch, but her lips were insensate, and upon his hand a drop of moisture fell—a tear limpid, pure from the hidden springs of the spirit. He kissed its piteous course upon her cheek.
"Olga!" he whispered softly. "What have I done?"
"Killed something in me—I think—something gentle and noble that was trying so hard to live—"
"Forgive me," he stammered. "I didn't know you cared so much."
She started in his arms, then slowly released herself, and drew away while with an anxious gaze he followed her.
"Our friendship—I cared for that more than anything else in