Chapter V: Part III (1)

Julia and Laurence were to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Hurst. Of late Laurence had shown an unusual measure of social punctiliousness. Julia realized that his new determination to see and be with people was a part of his resistance to suffering. She thought bitterly that his regard for the opinions of others was greater than his regard for her.

Julia put on a thin summer gown, very simply made, a light green sash, and a large black hat. Her misery had pride in itself, but when she looked in the glass she was pleased, and it was difficult to preserve the purity of her unhappiness. As she descended the stairs at Laurence's side she felt guiltily the trivial effect of her becoming dress. She wanted him to notice her. "I'm afraid we are late."

His fine eyes, with their sharp far-away expression, rested on her without seeming to take cognizance of her. "I hope not. Mrs. Hurst is a hostess who demands punctuality." He spoke to her as to a child. There was something cruel in his kindness. For fear of exposing himself he refused her equality.

If he would only love her--that is to say, desire her--Julia knew that she would be willing to make herself even more abject than she had been, and that it would hurt her less than his considerate obliviousness. Laurence had ordered a taxi-cab. The driver waited at the curbstone in the twilight. He turned to open the door for the two as they came out. Julia was avidly, yet resentfully, aware of his surreptitious admiration. She told herself that her sex was so beggared that she accepted without pride its recognition by a strange menial.

It was a beautiful cool evening. The glass in the taxi-cab was down. The cold stale smell of the city, blowing in their faces, was mingled with the perfume of the fading flowers in the park through which they passed. The trees rose strangely from the long dim drives. Here and there lights, surrounded by trembling auras, burst from the foliage. Far off were tall illuminated buildings, and, about them, in the deep sky, the reflection was like a glowing silence. The wall of buildings had the appearance of retreating continually while the cab approached, as if the huge blank bulks of hotels and apartment houses, withdrawing, held an escaping mystery.

Laurence scarcely spoke. Julia's sick nerves responded, with a feeling of expectation, to the vagueness of her surroundings. Her heart, beating terrifically in her breast, seemed to exist apart from her, unaffected by her depression and fatigue. It was too alive. She cried inwardly for mercy from it.

Mrs. Hurst's home was a narrow, semi-detached house with a brown-stone front and a bow window. From the upper floor it had a view of the park. When Julia and Laurence arrived, a limousine and Mr. Hurst's racer were already drawn up before the place. There were lights in one of the rooms at the right, and, between the heavy hangings that shrouded its windows, one had glimpses of figures.

Laurence said sneeringly, "Hurst has arrived, hasn't he! Affluent simplicity in a brown-stone front. You are honored that Mrs. Hurst is carrying you to glory with her."

Julia said, "But they really are quite helpless with their money, Laurence. Mrs. Hurst has a genuine instinct for something better."

"How ceremonious is this occasion anyway? I don't know whether I am equal to the frame of mind that should accompany evening dress."

"There will only be one or two people. Mrs. Hurst knows how we dislike formal parties."

Mr. Hurst, waving the servant back, opened the front door himself. He was a tall, narrow-shouldered man with a thin florid face. His pale humorous blue eyes had a furtive expression of defense. His mouth was thin and weak. His manner suggested a mixture of braggadocio and self-distrust. He dressed very expensively and correctly, but there was that in his air which somehow deprecated the success of his appearance. His sandy hair, growing thin on top, was brushed carefully away from his high hollow temples. The hand he held out, with its carefully manicured nails, was stubby-fingered and shapeless. "Well, well, Farley! How goes it? I've been trying to get hold of you. Want to go for a little fishing trip?" He was confused because he had not spoken to Julia first. "How d'ye do, Mrs. Farley? Think you could spare him for a few days?" Mr. Hurst's greeting of Laurence was a combination of bluff familiarity and resentful respect. When he looked at Julia his eyes held hers in bullying admiration.

Julia had never been able to say just where his elusive intimacy verged on presumption. Feeling irritated and helpless and sweetly sorry for herself, she lowered her lids.

"My--dear!" Mrs. Hurst kissed Julia. "How sweet you look! How do you do, Mr. Farley? It was nice of you to let Julia persuade you to come to us. We really feel you are showing your confidence in us. Julia, dear girl, tells me you have as much of an aversion to parties as Charles and I have. This will be a homely evening. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson are here, and there is a young Hindoo who has been giving some charming talks at the Settlement House. He speaks very poor English but he's so interested in America. He's only become acquainted with a few American women. I want him to meet Julia. I think he'll amuse her too." Mrs. Hurst's short little person was draped in a black lace robe embroidered with jet. She squinted when she smiled. Minute creases appeared about her bright eyes. Her expression was gentle and deceitful. Her arms, protruding from her sleeve draperies, were thin, and their movements weak. Her wedding ring and one large diamond-encircled turquoise hung loosely on the third finger of her left hand. Her hands were meager and showed that her bones were very small and delicate. About her hollow throat she wore a black velvet band, and her cheeks, no longer firm, were, nevertheless, childishly full above it. Though she said nothing that justified it, one felt in her a sort of affectionate malice toward those with whom she spoke. In her flattering acknowledgment of Julia's appearance there was something insidiously contemptuous. "Come away with me, child, and we'll dispose of that hat. Williams!" She turned to the Negro servant whom Mr. Hurst had intercepted at the door. She nodded toward Mr. Farley. The Negro went forward obsequiously.

"Yes, Williams, take Mr. Farley's hat," Mr. Hurst said. Then, in humorous confidence, _sotto voce,_ "How about a drink, Farley? My wife has that young Hindoo here. This is likely to be a dry intellectual evening. That may suit you, but I have to resort to first aid. Want to talk to you about that fishing trip. Come on to my den with me."

Shortly after this, Julia, descending the stairs with her hostess, found Laurence and Mr. Hurst in the hall again. Laurence, his lips twisted disagreeably, was listening with polite but irritating quiescence to Mr. Hurst's incessant high-pitched talk. Mr. Hurst, who had been surreptitiously glancing toward the shadowy staircase that hung above his guest's head, was quick to observe the approach of the women. He had always found fault with what he considered to be Julia's coldness, but he admired her tall figure and her fine shoulders. "Hello, hello! Here they are!"

"Charles!" Mrs. Hurst was whimsically disapproving. "Why haven't you taken Mr. Farley in to meet our guests? You are an erratic host."

Mr. Hurst moved forward. "That's all right! That's all right! Farley and I had some strategic confidences. You take him off and show him your Hindoo. I want Mrs. Farley to come out and see my rose garden, out in the court. I'm going to have a few minutes alone with her before you conduct her to the higher spheres and leave me struggling in my natural earthly environment. I won't be robbed of a little tête-à-tête with a pretty woman, just because there's an Oriental gentleman in the house who can tell her all about her astral body. Did you ever see your astral body, Mrs. Farley?"

"Boo!" Mrs. Hurst waved him off and pushed Julia toward him. "Go on, if she has patience with you. But mind you only keep her there a moment. I've told Mr. Vakanda she was coming and I'm sure he's already uneasy. Rose garden, indeed! It's quite dark, Charles! Come, Mr. Farley. Put this scarf about you, dear." She took a scarf up and threw it around Julia's shoulders.

"Ta-ta!" Mr. Hurst came confidently to Julia, and they walked out together across a glass-enclosed veranda that was brilliantly lit. Descending a few steps they were among the roses. "Autumn roses," said Mr. Hurst. The bushes drooped in vague masses about them. Here and there a blossom made a pale spot among the obscure leaves. Where the glow from the veranda stretched along the paths, the grass showed like a blue mist over the earth, and clusters of foliage had a carven look. The dark wall of the next house, in which the lighted windows were like wounds, towered above them. Over it hung the black sky covered with an infinite flashing dust of stars. Julia's face was in shadow, but her hair glistened on the white nape of her neck where the black lace scarf had fallen away.

Mr. Hurst had made a large sum of money from small beginnings. He would have enjoyed in peace the sense of power it gave him, and the indulgence in fine wines and foods and expensive surroundings for which he lived, but his wife prevented it. He had married her when they were both young and impecunious. She had been a school teacher in a mid-western city. She had managed to convince him that in marrying him she conferred an honor upon him, and she succeeded now in making him feel out of place and absurd in the environment which his efforts had created, which she, however, turned to her own use. Instead of flaunting his success in boastful generosity, according to his inclination, he found himself compelled to deprecate it. He had a secret conviction that he was a man to be reckoned with, but openly, and especially before his wife's friends, he ridiculed himself, perpetrating laborious and repetitious jokes at his own expense, just as she ridiculed him when they were alone.

Mrs. Hurst was chiefly interested in what she considered culture, and in welfare work, and among her acquaintances referred to her husband affectionately as if he were a child. She had no connection which would give her the _entrée_ to socially exclusive circles, and she was wise enough not to attempt pretenses which it would have been impossible for her to sustain. Her husband's friends were mostly selfmade and newly rich. She was affable to them but maintained toward them a mild but superior reserve. She expressed tolerantly her contempt of social ostentation and suggested that among Mr. Hurst's play-fellows she was condescending from her more vital and intellectual pursuits. Men who drank and played golf or poker between the hours of business considered her "brainy," but "a damned nice woman". She was generous to impecunious celebrities of whom she had been told to expect success. On one occasion when she and Mr. Hurst were sailing for England she was photographed on shipboard in the company of a popular novelist. The picture of the novelist, showing Mrs. Hurst beside him in expensive furs, appeared in a woman's magazine. She had never seen the man since, but she always referred to him as "a charming person". She was frequently called upon to conduct "drives" for charity funds. At masquerade balls organized for similar purposes her name appeared with others better known and she could honestly claim acquaintance with women whose frivolous occupations she professed to despise. She was an assiduous attendant at concerts and the public lectures which were given from time to time by men of letters or exponents of the arts. References to sex annoyed her. The vagueness of her aspirations sometimes led her into fits of depression and discouragement, but she had a small crabbed pride that prevented her from allowing any one--least of all, perhaps, her husband--to see what she felt. She was conscientiously attentive to children, but actually bored by them. She seldom thought of her own childhood, and she sentimentalized her past only when she reflected on her early girlhood and the instinctive longing for withheld refinements which had led her away from a sordid uncultured home into the profession of a teacher. Often her husband irritated her almost uncontrollably, but she never admitted that the moods he aroused in her had any significance. She was ashamed of him and called the feeling by other names.

Mr. Hurst's frustrated vanity consoled itself somewhat when he was alone before his mirror, for even his wife admitted that he was distinguished looking. He consumed bottle after bottle of a prescription which, so a specialist assured him, would make his hair come back. Always gay and affectionate and generally liked, he had a secret sensitiveness that he himself was but half aware of, and which no one who knew him suspected. He had never abandoned the romantic hope that some day he would meet a woman who would understand him. It was his unacknowledged desire to have his wife's opinion of him repudiated that made him perpetually unfaithful to her. Years ago he had been astonished to discover that even the women whom his wife introduced him to, who looked down on his absence of culture, and whose intellectual earnestness really seemed to him grotesque, were quite willing to take him seriously when he made love to them. He was bewildered but elated in perceiving the vulnerability of those he was invited to revere. Once he learned this it awakened something subtle and feminine in his nature and tempted him to unpremeditated cruelties. Though his sex entanglements were, as a rule, gross and banal enough, and quickly succeeded one another, he treasured at intervals a plaintive conviction that some day he would meet the woman who had, as he expressed it, "the guts to love him". Musing on this, he found in it the excuse for all the unpleasing episodes in which he took part. Outwardly cynical, he was sentimental to the point of bathos. He had one fear that obsessed him, the fear of growing old, so that _the_ woman, when she met him, might not be able to recognize him.

He had always been a little afraid of Julia and had a secret desire, on the rare occasions when they met, to hurt her in some way that might force her to concede their equality. He called himself a mixture of pig and child and when he met any of his wife's "high-brow" friends he envied them and wanted to trick them into exhibiting something of the pig also. Julia was young and pretty. He sighed and wished her more "human". He had never found her so charming as she seemed to-night. Under the accustomed stimulus of alcohol he relaxed most easily into a mood of affectionate self-pity. Without being drunk in any perceptible way, he loved himself and he loved every one, and his conviction of human pathos was strong. Julia's tense yet curiously subdued manner showed him that she was no longer oblivious to him. He fancied that there was already between them that sudden _rapport_ which came between him and women who were sexually sensible of his personality. "You aren't angry with me for taking you away like this?"

Julia said, "How could I be? I wish all social gatherings were in the open. It seems terrible to shut one's self indoors on these beautiful nights."

Charles Hurst was impelled to talk about himself. He did not know how to begin, and coughed embarrassedly. He imagined that Julia was ready to hear, and already he was grateful for the regard he anticipated. "Don't mind if I light a cigar?"

"I should like it."

"Don't smoke cigarettes, do you? Some of the ladies who come here shedding sweetness and light are hard smokers."

Julia shook her head negatively. "I don't. But you surely can't object, as a principle, to women smoking?"

"No. I think my objections are chiefly--chiefly what my wife--what Catherine would call esthetic. I'm not strong on principles of any sort. Don't take myself seriously enough."

Julia could make out his nonchalant angular pose as he stood looking down at her. As he held a match to his cigar the glow on his face showed his narrow regular features, his humorously ridiculing mouth, and his pale eyes caught in an unconscious expression of fright.

Julia said, "I'm afraid you take yourself very seriously indeed, or you wouldn't be so perpetually on the defensive." Poor Mr. Hurst! This evening she could not bear to be isolated by conventional reserves, even with him. It flattered her unhappiness to feel that he was a child. And this evening it seemed to her desperately necessary that she touch something living which would respond involuntarily to the contact.

Mr. Hurst was disconcerted. He took the cigar out of his mouth and examined the glowing tip which dilated in the dark as he stared at it. Tears had all at once come to his eyes. He wondered if he were drunker than he had imagined. The moment he suspected any one of a serious interest in him it robbed him of his aplomb. "Don't read me too well, Mrs. Farley. You know I'm not really much of a person. Coarse-fibered American type. No interests beyond business and all that. Good poker player. Hell of a good friend--when you let him. But commonplace. Damn commonplace. Nothing worth while at all from your point of view."

They strolled along the path further into the shadows. Julia was astonished by the ill-concealed emotion in Mr. Hurst's humorous voice. His transparency momentarily assuaged the tortures of her self-distrust. "How can you say that? My human predilections are not narrowed down to any particular type, I hope."

"Oh, well, I know--you and Catherine--miles over my head, all of it. Lectures on the Fourth Dimension. Some girl with adenoids here the other night been studying 'Einstein'. Damned if it had done her any good. Yes, what that gal needed was somebody to hug her." Julia was conscious that he was turning toward her. "Crass outlook, eh?" He laughed apologetically.

"She probably did," Julia said. They laughed together.

Mr. Hurst felt all at once unreasoningly depressed. He wanted to touch her as a child wants to touch the person who pleases it. But the sophisticated element in his nature intervened. He despised his own simplicity. "Do you find yourself getting anywhere in the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful? Honestly now, Mrs. Farley. I've had the whole program shoved at me--not that Catherine isn't the best of women, bless her little soul. You know the life we tired business men lead pretty much resembles that of the good old steady pack horse that does the work. We dream about green pastures and all that, but never get much closer to it. And when you get to the end of things you begin to wonder if your plodding did anybody any good--if anything ever did anybody any good. I've got no use for cynicism--consider it damn cheap. Wish some time I was a little bit more of a cynic. But I'm lost. Hopelessly lost. I take a highball every now and then because my--I think my mind hurts." He halted suddenly and they were looking into each other's vague faces. "This talk getting too damn serious, eh? Something about you to-night that invites a fellow to make a fool of himself."

"I hope not," Julia said. "I like you for talking frankly."

"Oh, I'm not too damn frank. We can't afford it in this world of hard knocks. Now to you, now, I'm not saying all that I'd like to, by a jugful."

"Then you don't make as much of a distinction between me and the crowd as I hoped."

Charles had let his cigar go out. He kept turning it over and over in his stiff fingers that she could not see. He felt that only when he held a woman in his arms and she was robbed of her conventional defenses could he speak openly to her. With other attractive women he had come quickly to a point like this where he wanted to talk of his inner life. He imagined it would give him relief if he could touch Julia's dress and put his head in her lap. The terrible fear of revealing himself before his wife and her friends had stimulated his imagination toward abandon. When he was a child his mother had not loved him. She was a defiant person. She was ashamed of him because he allowed himself to be victimized by all the things against which she had futilely rebelled. He had felt himself despised though he had never understood the reason. His mother found continual fault with him and never petted him. One day a girl cousin much older than he had discovered him in a corner crying and had comforted him, and had allowed him to put his head in her lap. As he had never gotten over considering himself from a child's standpoint, his adult visions always culminated in a similar moment of release. Whenever he became sentimental about a woman he imagined that he would some day put his head in her lap. He had been, in his own mind, so thoroughly convicted of weakness that the development of strength no longer appealed to him as a means of self-fulfilment. He abandoned himself to an incurable dependence for which he had not as yet found a permanent object. It eased him when he could evoke the maternal in a mistress. "Aren't we all--somewhat on the defensive toward each other?" he said after a minute.

Julia was reminded again of what she thought to be her own tragedy. She felt reckless and wanted some one into whom to pour herself. She imagined herself lost in the dark garden, crushed between the walls and bright windows of the houses. In some indefinable way she identified herself with the million stars, flashing and remote in the black distance of the sky that showed narrowly above the roofs. "Yes," she said. "And so uselessly. People are so pathetic in their determination not to recognize what they are. If we ever had the courage to stop defending ourselves for a moment--But none of us have, I'm afraid." She carried the pity which she had for herself over to him. She had noticed how thin his face was, that the bold gaze with which he looked at her was only an expression of concealment, and that there were strained lines at the corners of his good-tempered mouth. Yes, in the depths of his pale eyes with their conscious glint of humor there was undoubtedly something eager and almost blankly disconcerted.

Charles could not answer her at once. He threw his cigar aside. His hand trembled a little. I wonder how drunk I am, he said to himself. He decided that he was helpless in the clutch of his own impulses. He thought, A damn fool now as always. Have I got this woman sized up wrong? She's a dear. Here goes. Poor little thing! Gosh, I know she can't be happy with that self-engrossed ass she's married to! In his more secret nature he was proud of his own temerity. "Damn it all, Mrs. Farley--Julia--" He hesitated. "I've queered myself right off by calling you Julia, haven't I?" His laugh was forced and unhappy. He glanced over his shoulder toward the house.

Julia was alarmed by the unexpected immanence of something she was trying to ignore. She kept repeating to herself, He's a child! Her thoughts grew more disconnected each instant. She wanted to go away, yet she half knew that she was demanding of Charles the very thing that terrified her. "Of course not. Mrs. Hurst calls me Julia, why shouldn't you?" Her tone was intended to lift their talk to a plane of unsexed naturalness.

"Yes, by George, why shouldn't I! She calls you that a good deal as if she were your mother." He paused. "Did you know I'd reached the ripe old age of forty-one?" (He was really forty-two.)

"It doesn't shock me."

"Well, I wish it did. I don't like to be taken so damn much for granted." (He wanted to tell her that Catherine was three years older than he, but his sense of fair play withheld him.) "An old man of my age has no right to go around looking for some one to understand him, has he?"

"Why not? I'm afraid we do that to the end of time, Mr. Hurst."

"Say, now, honestly, Mrs. Farley--Julia--I can't lay myself wide open to anybody who insists on calling me Mr. Hurst. I feel as if I were a hundred and seven." He tried to ingratiate himself with his boyishness.

"I haven't any objection to calling you Charles." (Julia thought uncomfortably of Mrs. Hurst and, remembering her, was embarrassed.) "Don't feel hurt if I'm not able to do it at once. Certain habits of thought are very hard to get rid of."

"And I suppose you've been in the habit of considering me in the sexless antediluvian class!"

"You've forgotten that Laurence--that my husband is as old as you are."

When Julia mentioned her husband, Charles's impetuosity was dampened. It upset him and made him unhappy. However, he was determined to sustain his impulses. "Yes, I had."

Silence.

Charles wanted to cry. "You know I appreciate it awfully that you are willing to enter into the holy state of friendship with an obvious creature like myself. Catherine says you're a wonderful woman, and she's a damned good judge--of her own kind, that is."

"I'm afraid she's flattered me. I wish you weren't so humble about our friendship. I am as grateful as you are for anything genuine."

"Yes, I'm too confounded humble. I know I am. Always was. You know I'm not really lacking in self-respect, Miss Julia."

"Of course you aren't. You seem to me one of the most self-respecting people I know."

Charles was silent a long time. He knew that he was being carried away on a familiar current. By God, she means it! he said to himself. He would refuse to regard anything but the present moment. "How does it happen you and I never came together like this before? I'd got into the habit of thinking you were one of these icy Dianas that had an almighty contempt for any one as well rooted in Mother Earth as I am."

Julia laughed uncomfortably. "That's a mixed metaphor." Then she said seriously, "I want to understand things--not to try to escape. It seems to me we must all go back to Mother Earth if we try to do that." She added, "I'm afraid we are making ourselves delinquent. We mustn't abandon Mrs. Hurst and her guests altogether."

They turned toward the veranda. They were walking side by side and inadvertently Charles's hand brushed Julia's. He caught her fingers. She made a slight gesture of repulsion which he scarcely observed. Then her hand was relinquished to him. "Confound these social amenities! I thought you were going to be my mother-confessor, Miss Julia." Until he touched her hand he had been conscious of their human separateness and his sensuous impulses had been in abeyance. With the feel of her flesh, she became simply the woman he wanted to kiss, the possessor of a beautiful throat, and of mysterious breasts that compelled him familiarly through the dim folds of her white dress. His acquisitive emotion was savage and childlike. Here was a strange thing which menaced and invited him. He wanted to know it, to tear it apart so that he need no longer be afraid of it. Already he annihilated it and loved it for being subject to him. He leaned toward her and when she lifted her face to him he kissed her. He felt the shudder of surprise that passed over her. "Julia--don't hate me. Child, I'm going to fall in love with you! I know it!" His voice was smothered in her hair. He kissed her eyes and her mouth again. Trembling, Julia was silent. He wondered recklessly if she despised him, but while he wondered he could not leave her. He felt embittered toward her because she awakened his dormant sensuality and he supposed that women like her were superior to the necessities that left him helpless.

"Please!" Julia said. When his mouth was pressed against hers she was suffocated by the same thrill of astonishment and despair which she had experienced when she first allowed Dudley Allen to take her. When she was able to speak she said, "Oh, we are so pathetic and absurd--both of us! It's so hopelessly meaningless."

He was excited and elated. In a broken voice, he said, "So you think I am pathetic and absurd? I am, child. I don't care! I don't care!" He thought that she was referring to the general opinion of him. He hardened toward her, while, at the same moment, a wave of physical tenderness enveloped him. Stealthily, he exulted in the capacity he possessed for sexual ruthlessness. He knew she could not suspect it. He would be honest with her only when it became impossible for her to evade him.

They heard footsteps and turned from each other with a common instinct of defense. Mrs. Hurst was descending the steps from the lighted porch. "I have a bone to pick with that spouse of mine," she called pleasantly when she could see them. Charles had taken out a fresh cigar and was lighting a match.

"Hello, hello! Am I in trouble again?" Charles fumbled for Julia's hand, and gave it a squeeze, but dropped it as his wife drew near.

Mrs. Hurst's figure was in silhouette before them. "You'll spoil my dinner party, Charles! Julia, child, I'm afraid you need reprimanding too. You have to be stern with Charles." Her tone was truly vexed, but so frankly so that it was evident she suspected nothing amiss.

"I'm sorry if I am in disfavor." Julia's voice was cold. In her nihilistic frame of mind she wished that her hostess had discovered the compromising situation.

Julia's reply was irritating and Mrs. Hurst's displeasure inwardly deepened. She felt stirring in her a chronic distrust and animosity toward other women, but would give no credence to her own emotion. "Come, child, don't be ridiculous! I suppose I can't blame Charles for trying to steal you from me. I'm sure he wanted to talk to you about himself. It's the one thing he cannot resist." She laughed, a forced pleasant little laugh, and caught Julia's arm in a determined caressing pressure. "Come. We're all going to be good. Mr. Vakanda is waiting to take you in to dinner." Julia followed her toward the house. "Come, Charles!" Mrs. Hurst commanded him abruptly over her shoulder. The manner in which she spoke to him suggested strained tolerance.

Charles's immediate relief at not having been seen was succeeded by complacency. To deceive his wife was for him to experience a naïve sense of triumph. Poor little Kate! He could even be sorry for her.

Julia more than ever wanted to feel that Laurence's refusal of her was forcing upon her a promiscuous and degrading attitude toward sex. She said, "I'm sure the fault is mine. I couldn't resist the night and the roses."

"Now don't try to defend him. The roses were his excuse, not yours." Mrs. Hurst wondered how they had been able to see anything of the roses in such a light. She wished to forget about it. "Mollie Wilson has been telling us how difficult the role of a mother is these days. She says she envies you May with her amenability. Lucy has some of the most startlingly advanced conceptions of what her mother should let her do."

Charles, walking almost on their heels, interrupted them. "It would be an insult to Ju--to Mrs. Farley if I needed an excuse for carrying her off for a minute." He cleared his throat. "Say, Kate, damn it all, will you and she be upset if I call her Julia? I like her as well as you do."

Again Mrs. Hurst was irritated and inexplicably disturbed. It was Charles--not Julia--of course. Any woman. He's always like that! "Then I shall expect to begin calling Mr. Farley Laurence," she said acidly. She spoke confidentially to Julia. "He can't resist them, dear--any of them. Pretty women. You'll have to put up with his admiration. All my nicest friends do."

"The dickens they do!" Charles grumbled jocosely. His wife's tone made him nervous. He was suspicious of her.

When they came up on the lighted veranda a maid passed them, a neat good-looking young woman in black with inquisitive eyes. Julia caught on the servant's face what seemed an expression of inquiry and amusement. Charles, who had often tried to flirt with the girl, glanced at her shamefacedly and immediately lowered his gaze. Damn these women! Julia, feeling guilty and antagonistic, observed Mrs. Hurst, but found that she appeared as usual, sweet and negatively self-contained, yet suggesting faintly a hidden malice.

They walked through a long over-furnished hall and entered the drawing room. The men rose: the Hindoo, good-looking but with a softness that would inevitably repel the Anglo-Saxon; Mr. Wilson, stout and jovial, his small eyes twinkling between creases of flesh, the bosom of his shirt bulging over his low-cut vest; Laurence, clumsy in gesture, kind, but almost insulting in his composure.

During the evening Julia could not bring herself to meet Laurence's regard, nor did she again look directly at Mr. Hurst. Charles, after some initial moments of readjustment when he found it difficult to join in the general talk, recovered himself with peculiar ease. Indeed his later manner showed such pronounced elation that Julia wondered if it were not eliciting some unspoken comment. When he turned toward her she was aware of the furtive daring of his expression, though she refused to make any acknowledgment of it. He laughed a great deal, made boisterous jokes uttered in the falsetto voice he affected when he was inclined to comicality, and, when his jests were turned upon himself, chuckled immoderately in appreciation of his own discomfiture. The Hindoo, whose bearing displayed extraordinary breeding, had opaque eyes full of distrust. His good nature under Charles's jibes was assumed with obvious effort and did not conceal his polite contempt. During dinner and afterward Charles plied every one, and particularly the men, with drink. Mrs. Hurst had always been divided between the attractions of the elegance which demanded a fine taste in wines and liqueurs, and her moral aversion to alcohol. She never served wines when she and Charles were alone, and to-night she was provoked by his ill-bred insistence that the glasses of her guests be refilled.

When the meal was over and the men had returned to the drawing room, Charles seemed to be in a state of fidgets. His face and even his helpless-looking hands were flushed. He walked about continually, and was perpetually smoothing his carefully combed hair over the baldish spot on the top of his head. Mrs. Wilson, who was florid and coarsely good-looking, with her iron-gray hair, admired his distinguished figure in its well-cut clothes. His flattering manner when he talked to her made her feel self-satisfied. Julia, though she had honestly protested to Charles that she did not smoke, indulged in a cigarette. Mrs. Wilson also lit one and expelled the smoke from her pursed mouth in jerky unaccustomed puffs. Mrs. Hurst's dislike of tobacco was equal to her repugnance to alcohol. She refused to smoke but was careful to show that her distaste for cigarettes was a personal idiosyncrasy. She made little amused grimaces at the smokers and treated them as if they were irresponsible children. Mrs. Wilson, in talking to Mr. Vakanda, contrived many casual and contemptuous references to her recent experiences in Europe. She was divided between her genuine boredom with European culture and her pride in her acquaintance with it.

Charles, observing Julia in this group, appreciated the distinction of her simpler, more aristocratic manner; and the clarity and frankness of her statements seemed to him to place her as a being from another world. Damn me, she's a thoroughbred! Makes me ashamed of myself, bless her soul! His emotions were too much for him. He went into his "den," which was across the hall, and poured himself a drink. Fragments of the evening's conversation buzzed in his head. Julia and Mr. Wilson had disagreed as to the validity of certain phases of the newer movements in art. Mr. Wilson scoffed blatantly at all of them. Mr. Vakanda was more reserved, but one suspected that he looked upon Westerners as adolescent and treated their art accordingly. Charles, without knowing what he was talking about, had come jestingly to Julia's rescue. When he remembered how often he had joined Mr. Wilson in ribald comment on subjects which she treated as serious, he felt he had been a traitor to her. Damn my soul, I'm hard hit! I never half appreciated that girl until to-night! Don't know what the hell's been the matter with me! Overcome by his reflections, he walked to a window and stared out into the quiet dimly lit street. His suddenly aroused sensual longing for Julia returned and made him embarrassed and unhappy. He set his glass down on the window ledge and passed a hand across each eye as if he were wiping something away. Damn it all, I'm in love with her all right.

* * * * *

When the time for the Farleys' departure arrived Charles was talkative and uneasy. He clapped his hand on Laurence's shoulder. "You're one of the few men who's fit to fish with, Farley. Most of 'em are too damned loud for the fish. We'll fix that little trip up yet. I suspect you of being the philosopher of this bunch anyway."

"I can furnish the requisite of silence, but I'm afraid it requires some peculiar psychic influence to attract fish. I haven't got it."

Charles's manner was self-conscious to a degree. He spoke rapidly and unnecessarily lifted his voice. His wife watched him with a cold kind little smile of disgust. She wanted to create the impression that she understood him, but her resentment of him rose chiefly from the fact that he was incomprehensible to her. "That's all right. I'll catch the fish. I'll catch the fish. Damned if I haven't enjoyed the evening. Say, Farley, Kate and I are coming over some evening and I'm going to talk to your wife. I believe she's just plain folks even if she can chant Schopenhauer and the rest of those cranks. You know I admire your brains, Miss Julia. By Jove, I do. You can give me some of the line of patter I've missed. Kate, now--Kate's got it all at her finger tips, but she's given me up long ago. Have a drink before you go, Farley? No! You know I'm a great admirer of Omar Khayyám's, Miss Julia. The rest of you high-brows seem to have put the kibosh on the old boy. He's the fellow that had some bowels of compassion in him. Knew what it was like to want a drink and be dry." Charles smoothed back his hair. His hand was trembling slightly. He looked at Julia now and then but allowed no one else to catch his eyes.

Laurence, holding his silk hat stiffly in his fingers, moved determinedly toward the front door. His smile was enigmatic but his desire for escape was evident.

Julia said, "I'll talk to you about Schopenhauer, Mr. Hurst, and convince you that he was very far from a crank." She smiled.

"Yep? Well, guess I'm jealous of him. I'm willing to be taught. This business grind I'm in is converting me into pretty poor company. Not much use for a meditative mind in the stock market. Eh, Farley? The women have got it all over us when it comes to refining life."

Laurence said, "I imagine I know as little of the stock market as my wife, Hurst."

"And you must remember I'm a business woman, too."

"So you are. Working in that confounded laboratory. Well, I've got no excuse then."

"Know thyself, Charles!" Mrs. Hurst shook her finger playfully.

"Yep. Constitutional aversion to knowing myself--knowing anything else. Looks to me as if you had picked a lemon, Kate."

"We must really go." Julia held out her hand.

Mrs. Hurst shook hands with Julia. "So delightful to have had you. I'm glad you impressed Mr. Vakanda with the significance of America in the world of art, dear." Mrs. Hurst, at that instant, disliked her guest intensely, but she preserved her smile and her delicate tactful air. Laurence shook hands with her also. His reserve appealed to her. She could be more frankly gracious with him.

Charles pressed Julia's fingers lingeringly, in spite of her efforts to withdraw them. He was suddenly depressed and gazed at her with an open almost despairingly interrogative expression. "Yep, damn me, Kate's right. You put the Far East in its place, Miss Julia. Did me good to see it." He giggled nervously, but his face immediately grew serious. Seeing her go away into her own strange world depleted the confidence he experienced while with her. He was oppressed by the company of his wife, and his pathetic feeling about himself returned. For the moment the hope that Julia would understand him--like him and exculpate his deficiencies, even see in him that which was admirable--was more poignant than the passing desire to touch and dominate her body. There was a helpless unreserve in his eyes.

Julia could see the tired lines in his face all at once peculiarly emphasized. His lips quivered. She thought he looked old but for some reason all the more childlike. She could not resist his need for her.

It was with an acute sense of disgust that Laurence left the house.

* * * * *

Mr. Hurst did not communicate with Laurence in regard to the fishing trip, but one morning soon after the dinner party Mrs. Hurst called Julia on the telephone and invited her to come with Laurence to an all-day picnic in the country. "This is just the sort of thing Charles delights in," Mrs. Hurst explained, in her hard pleasant light-timbred voice. Julia heard her polite laugh over the wire. "I shan't blame you if you refuse us. It's really too absurd. We shall probably be consumed by mosquitoes."

"Why, I'm afraid we can't go," Julia said. "Laurence is very busy and you know I have my work, too."

"I suppose you can't get off for a day--either of you? Charles is quite determined to see you and your husband again."

"It wouldn't be possible. It's nice of you. I really would enjoy it but it wouldn't be possible for either of us."

Again Mrs. Hurst's confidential amusement. "Well, I'm sorry. Though for your own sake I'm glad. Charles has rather a boy's idea of fun. Well--don't be surprised if we arrive at your front door some evening in the near future."

"I shall be very glad," Julia said.

On a Monday evening while the Farley family were at an early dinner they heard a laboring motor in the street. Bobby, who could not be restrained when the prospect of diversion was at hand, ran out to see what it was and, on his return, reported that Mr. and Mrs. Hurst were at the front door.

Laurence laid his napkin wearily aside. "To what do we owe the honor? Have you been to see them since the other night?"

Julia said she had not.

When Julia arrived in the hallway Mr. and Mrs. Hurst were already there, having been admitted by Bobby. Julia could not look at Charles's face. With an effort she smiled at his wife.

Mrs. Hurst, with one of her pleasant, mildly reducing grimaces, said, "How are you? You were dining? There! I told you so, Charles!"

Julia imagined that there was constraint in Mrs. Hurst's manner. Their hands barely touched.

"How do you do? How do you do, Mrs. Hurst?" Laurence's expression was polite but not agreeable. For some reason he spoke to Charles with more cordiality.

"How d'ye do, Farley? How d'ye do, Miss Julia! Bless my soul, I'm glad to see you! Kate couldn't keep me away from here. Yes, I confess it. All my fault." He was uneasy as before, and adopted the falsetto tone of his comic moods. He wrung Julia's hand for an instant and looked greedily into her face. But he could not sustain the gaze. He turned to Laurence and began to joke about the speed of his motor car.

"Please go on to your dinner. I'm really ashamed that I allowed Charles to bring me here now." Mrs. Hurst, smiling, preserved the inconsequential atmosphere of the group. At the same time she felt a repugnance to Julia which she had never experienced until recently.

Julia, also, disliked the furtive intentness with which Mrs. Hurst, continuing to smile, occasionally scrutinized her.

"We dine so much later."

"But we've quite finished--unless you will have a cup of coffee with us?"

"Coffee? What say, coffee?" Charles could not keep from listening to what Julia and his wife were saying, though he was trying, at the same time, to talk to Laurence. Now he interrupted himself. "Shall we have some coffee with them, Kate?" Just then he caught Julia's eyes and a flush spread over his face. "I think we'd better forego the coffee and take these people for a little ride. That's what we came for." He kept on gazing steadily and sentimentally at Julia who was embarrassed by this too open regard.

"Shall we? Perhaps we had. Our own dinner hour will come all too soon," Mrs. Hurst said.

"Won't you come in here?" Laurence motioned toward an open door.

Julia was vexed by her own mingled depression and agitation. Frowning and smiling at the same time, she added abstractedly, "Yes. How ridiculous we are--standing here in this chilly hall. Please come in here. I will have Nellie make a fire for you."

"Who wants a fire this time of year!" Charles followed his wife, who entered the half-darkened room with Julia. "Farley, you and Miss Julia get your wraps and we'll wait for you. Don't waste your time making yourself lovely, Miss Julia."

After Laurence had turned up the lights he and Julia went out. Charles and his wife, who had seated themselves, waited in silence. Charles stretched out his long legs in checked trousers and crossed them over one another. He stared up at the ceiling and pursed his mouth in a soundless whistle.

Catherine said, "We can't stay with these people long. You know the Goodes are coming over after dinner."

Charles started. "What's that?" He sat bolt upright. "Goodes, eh? No. All right. Plenty of time." He did not relax his posture again, but drummed on the arm of his chair, tapped his feet, and for a few moments half hid his face in the cupped palm of his hand.

Mrs. Hurst looked bored and tired. Her small sardonic mouth was very precisely set. Her gaze was both humorous and weary. Now and then she glanced at Charles and forced a twinkle to her eyes, while, at the same moment, her features showed her repressed irritation. Mrs. Hurst had suspected, after the previous meeting with the Farleys, that Charles was interested in Julia. Suspicion sharpened her observation of him but her policy toward him demanded of her that she be amused by all he did. Otherwise the situation between them might long ago have precipitated a crisis which she, at least, was not ready to face. In a moment of impetuosity Charles would be capable of heaven-knows-what regrettable and irretrievable resolution. He had so often shown the same kind of frank admiration for a pretty woman that she made the best of things by appearing to tolerate, if not to encourage, his folly. She was certain that his infatuations were so illusory that a little enforced acquaintance with the intimate personalities of her successive rivals would dissipate his regard for them. In this case, too, she had no fear that a woman of Julia's poise and enlightenment would make any serious response to Charles's naïve overtures. If Mrs. Hurst could convince herself that a situation was sufficiently grotesque (viewed, of course, from the standpoint of manners) it became unreal to her, and she could no longer believe that such a vague and ridiculous cause would produce any effect in actuality.

Waiting for Laurence and Julia to appear, Charles, even when he was not looking at her, was conscious of his wife's personality. Though he could not analyze the impression, he was, as he had been repeatedly before, disconcerted by the cold understanding which he saw in her small, humorously lined face. He was startled by the boldness of her evasions. All his mental attempts to capture a grievance were diverted when he considered her demure gentleness and good breeding. He had, at the outset, to accept the fact of his inferiority. Now his pale eyes, fixed intermittently in an upward gaze, were startled and perturbed. His mouth twitched. He felt boisterous, and suppressed his laughter, though he did not know whether he should direct it against her or against himself. She was so visually real to him: her withered small hands, the flesh under her plump throat--flesh that fell away and somehow failed to soften the contour of her little chin. At these moments when she connived, or so it might almost seem, to further his betrayal of her he felt a sentimental affection for her, and decided that it was only because of the physical repulsion which her ageing gave him that he did not love her completely and lead an ideal life. He was sorry for himself and for her too because he could not conquer his aversion.

Catherine said, "Julia is particularly handsome to-night."

Charles, with the blank innocence of a self-conscious child, glanced at his wife. "You're right. She is. You dare me to fall in love with her, do you? Think when she gets a good dose of me--"

"Sh-h!"

Charles eyed the door. "Somebody 'ull hear me? Say, Kate, for a manhandler I've never seen your equal." He jumped up, walked twice around the room, and stopped, gazing down at Catherine with a vacant deliberate amusement. Each felt the other the victor in some stealthy unconfessed combat. "All the spice goes out of forbidden fruit when your wife hands it to you on a gold platter with her compliments. That it?" Charles asked. He was wondering if his presentment about Julia as the great thing in his life had been an illusion. He would accept his wife's joke recklessly but that did not prevent his timidity in regard to himself from returning and influencing his acts.

* * * * *

Julia sat beside Charles while he drove. Laurence and Mrs. Hurst were on the back seat. Julia listened to what Charles said, but half understanding him. Nothing was real to her but the self from which she wanted to escape, this self which she knew would always deceive her. When the car veered at a corner Charles and she were thrown together so that their shoulders touched. She knew that he leaned toward her to prolong the contact. The warmth of his body gave her no clear consciousness of him, and was a sustained reminder of inscrutable things with which he was not concerned. She despised the humility of his intellect. What attracted her was a kind of primitive cruelty which he tried to hide. She wanted to be consumed by his weakness, to be left nothing of herself. His lovemaking repelled her. She perceived his sentimentality toward womankind. All that he said was false because unrelated to his fundamental impulse which was to take without giving anything equivalent. She had somehow arrived at the conviction that only the things which hurt her were true. Charles's conception of beauty was childish. But she would not be afraid to abandon herself to the things in him he was ashamed of, which he could not control. When he was conquered, as she was, by the desires his intellect sought to evade, he would be caught in actuality. Neither of them could be deceived. She was impatient with Charles's deference to what he considered her finer feelings. There she found herself insulted by the shallowness of his respect.