CHAPTER IX

MRS. ESSINGTON SAYS “NO”

SHE wore a gown of sheer white, with a mantle of Spanish lace drawn close over her sloping shoulders and the flowing lines of her arms. Above it her large gray eyes looked out luminously.

“What is it?” she asked. Her face was full of queries. She divined her crisis already upon her.

Without a word he handed her the letter.

She read it through, dwelt on it a frowning space—looked at him while the frown smoothed itself.

His full under lip twitched with a suggestion half cruel, half sensitive. She saw he was suffering, but there was a confusion of feeling, something with which the letter had nothing to do.

“Let us go somewhere else,” she said. Her glance had traveled toward the open door.

He followed her through the library, dreading lest she pause there; but she went on into the conservatory.

He closed the door, shutting them into the room of glass. In the midst of the transparent walls, searched by the sun, they were alone. The north end where the outer door opened, the south end looking on the lift of the hill lawn, were screened thick with heliotrope and passion-vine. The west fronted the skirts of the terrace, the somber, lonely oak-plantation, the distant sea. They saw through glass the out-of-doors, spacious, fresh, moved by the wind. Within, the air was motionless, too hot, too sweet, with scents of newly watered flowers.

She handed the letter back to him as though it were a mere nothing, saying simply, “Hawtry was against us from the first. He had more influence than we.” She put it plural from habit.

“Hawtry was on the spot, not dawdling on the other side of the continent,” he answered sullenly. The way he put it was brutal to her.

“_I_ know the thing’s all right,” he said half to himself; “but the rest of ’em have to know it, too! I’ve got to make ’em! _That’s_ my failure. Florence—as a force I’m nothing. Lord! How I hate the public—and I’m just one of the least of ’em! That’s it,” he said. His chin was sunk on his breast.

“The public is slow to see and quick to change. What they think doesn’t matter with good work.”

Her mind was busy beyond mere saying. She had never heard him talk in this strain before. She could remember when he had not known that his work was good; and he said “_I_,” not “_we_.” She saw that marked an end. More—he not only separated himself from her, but he divided that self: the musician—the man, and called the man a failure. The letter was not responsible for that.

“I’d like to give _you_ a better proof than this of what you’ve done. For, Florence, you have done everything!” That was what he was saying.

She put up her hand, warning the words away. “I don’t need proof of what you can do.”

“_Don’t_ you?” he questioned, looking at her. “Haven’t you begun lately to suspect I wasn’t worth what you’ve given?”

“Tony!” her reproach was a cry. “You know—I couldn’t! But I have taken more than I have given!” An insane passion for confession was on her. But he was following his one idea.

“Then why have you avoided me so lately?” She had been expecting it.

“Have we ever been much together among people?”

He looked at her, baffled, but with something dogged and determined in his face. She had never seen such a look on it before. And she was going to refuse what he was about to ask. How broad his shoulders bulked on the glare of glass!

“Do you regret what you said at the dance, then?” he persisted.

“No!” She said it with such vehement impulse that he straightened, took a step toward her.

“But now you know what a failure I am—?”

“Oh, Tony—one failure isn’t failure!”

“But,” he gloomed at her, “it is if there’s never anything else!”

“There will be,” she said steadily; “but _if_ there never were, who was ever loved for his successes!”

“Florence,” he said, “you are—you—oh, I don’t deserve it!” He took her gently by the shoulders. “_Will_ you marry me?”

The question was between them, but left each cold. She was a long time looking out through the begonia leaves before she answered—“No.”

His hands dropped from her shoulders. She saw with a sort of shock how sure he had been of her! He could hardly take in what she meant.

“Do you remember what you said?” His voice, coming after a minute, sounded at a distance to her.

She couldn’t speak. She nodded.

“Then why—now—this?”

“Because—” her voice broke. She waited a minute, fighting for self-control; then went on more quietly—“because you don’t love me, Tony.”

She startled him. “Florence,” he said earnestly, “you wrong us both. You know you’ve always been the only one!”

“I only know,” she said, “that you do not love me now—because you once did. Think! Am I what I was to you six months ago? Then think of marriage! A lifetime! You will be still a young man when I am an old woman. It was inevitable this should end.”

“But why do you talk like this?” He had her by the shoulders again. “What has age to do with it? You knew that three nights ago as well as now. It’s an excuse! Don’t you love me?”

Her voice was almost listless. “I love you so much that I’m not afraid even of ending it.”

“Florence, if you knew how I need you!” How he touched her vulnerable point! “If you knew how I have lost the only faith I had in myself!”

“You have _not_!” she made passionate denial. She freed herself, and stepped back from him; but he came on until he was close in front of her as she pressed back among the ferns. He looked bewildered—furious.

“You don’t need me!” she denied him. “We have given all we can. It is different. I have nothing more for you.” She put her hands behind her.

“Florence, Florence!” He spoke her name threateningly. “That is just talk! Why didn’t you say at once you were tired of me!”

“I have told you the truth.”

“Oh, the truth! Words! Good God, what woman ever talked reason to the man she loved!”

She gave a little, bitter shrug, as if his words had frozen her in the midst of the sun and flowers.

“_You_ have nothing to regret!” he said, savage with self-pity. “There’s no blame—Lord, I don’t _blame_ you! But why didn’t you tell me—” he stared at her, white with his dreadful realization—“why didn’t you tell me before?”

Scarcely less pale, she looked back at him. What was it that had already happened? Had everything been done too late?