CHAPTER XVIII.
A BLOODLESS ENTHUSIAST.
Cryder did not come the next day or evening, nor did he write. At first Hermia experienced a mild fear that he was ill; but Helen Simms called the following morning and said, en passant, that she had met him a few moments before on the street. Then Hermia began to be piqued and a little mortified. For several hours she thought less about dismissing him. The next day the whole thing seemed like a dream; she caught herself wondering if it had really happened. At this point she received a note from Cryder.
“It is a year since I have seen you, but I have a book due at the publisher’s on Thursday, and I have been working night and day. After the weary grind is over you will see too much of me. In the mean time I am with you always. In fancy I look into your eyes and see the waves break over the rocks, and watch the moon coquet with the tides. Now the green bosom of the sea is placid for a moment, and I see * * * the mermaids * * * sleeping in their caves—
“Until to-night! “O. C.”
Hermia shrugged her shoulders. It was very pretty, but rather tame. At the same time her pride was glad to be reassured that he still loved her, and she once more put her dismissal into mental shape and blunted the arrow of decree with what art she possessed.
When he was shown into the library that evening she rose nervously, wondering how she was to keep him from kissing her. He raised her hand lightly to his lips after his old habit, complimented her Catherine de’ Medici gown, and threw himself into an easy-chair by the fire.
“How grateful this fire is!” he exclaimed. “It is one of those horrid, sleety nights. The horse slipped once or twice.”
“Did you come in a cab?” asked Hermia.
“Yes; I had not the courage to face that long block from the elevated.”
He settled himself back in his chair, asked permission to light a cigarette, and for an hour entertained her in his most brilliant vein. Hermia listened with the most complex sensations of her life. The predominating one at first was intense mortification. There was no danger of this man blowing out his brains for any woman. She was rather the most agreeable woman he knew just then, but—there were plenty of others in the world. Then her brain and her philosophy came to her aid, and she began to be amused. She had always been able to laugh at her own expense, and she indulged in a little private burst whilst Cryder was reciting a graphic passage from his lately finished book. The laugh added several years to her twenty-five, but on the whole, she concluded, it did her good.
Then she began to reason: Why break it off? He is the most agreeable man I have ever known; why lose him? If I dismiss him thus cavalierly, he will be piqued at least, and I shall not even have his friendship. And I can never love or have a throb of real feeling. All that was the delusion of a morbid imagination. There are no men like those I have dreamed of. The ocean rolls between the actual and the ideal.
She did Cryder some injustice in the earlier part of her meditations. He was really very fond of her. There were many things about her that he liked immensely. She was beautiful, she was artistic, she had a fine mind, and, above all things, she was the fashion, and he had carried her off. But he never rushed at a woman and kissed her the moment he entered the room; he did not think it good taste. Moreover, she looked particularly handsome in that black-velvet gown and stiff white ruff, and her position in that carved, high-backed chair was superb. His eye was too well pleased to allow the interference of his other senses. After a time he went over and lifted her face and kissed her. She shrugged her shoulders a little but made no resistance.
* * * * *