Chapter V: Part I: I (5)

“I’ll tell you what is the matter with you,” said Ida, cruelly. “It’s the spring of the year.”

Whalen sprang to his feet. For the first time in his anæmic life he was furiously angry, and he rejoiced in the sensation. “I wish you were a man,” he stuttered. “I’d beat you. It would do my heart good.”

“If you were a real man you would enjoy beating a woman a long sight more,” goaded Ida, who watched him as a man-eating tigress may watch the squirming victim between her paws. She had fed her vanity and amused herself by playing on the little man’s pale emotions until she was convinced he really was in love with her. She suddenly made up her mind to force him to “let go,” and experience the sensation of being made love to feloniously.

“I am not a brute,” announced Whalen, still in the same stifled voice. His face was purple, but he was conscious of a warning whisper that he was in a fair way to lose this remunerative pupil. He dismissed the warning. There is probably no man so insignificant, in whom passion for the imperative woman does not develop abnormally the purely masculine conceit. He may despair in solitude, when devitalised by reaction and doubt, but when in her presence, under her inviting eye, and hurried to a crisis by hammering pulses and scorching blood, he is merely the primitive male with whom to desire is to have.

Ida laughed, a low throaty husky laugh. “If you were,” she said cuttingly, “you might stand a show.”

“It is you that are brutal,” hissed poor Whalen.

Ida leaned back in her chair and looked at him out of half-closed eyes. “What induced you to fall in love with me, anyhow?” she demanded in her sweet lazy voice. Whalen clenched his hands.

“I am a man if I am not a brute. You are the most fascinating woman on earth, and you have deliberately tried to entice me from the path of rectitude I have trod all my life----”

“What’s that?” Ida sat up straight, her brows drawn in an ominous frown.

“I have resisted you until today, but I yield----”

“What the devil are you talking about?”

“I expected to be tormented to the utmost limit. But I have stood all of it that I purpose to stand.” His voice by this time was a subdued roar. “I don’t care whether you love me or not. I don’t think you could love anybody. I have read that sirens never do. But you are an enchantress, and you have shown plainly enough----”

Ida’s frown had relaxed, but her eyes blazed. He misunderstood their expression, as well as the sudden forward thrust of her head. He sprang forward, caught her by the shoulders and kissed her.

“Aw!” Ida’s voice was almost a roar. She leaped to her feet, twirled him about, caught him by the back of his collar and the seat of his trousers, and threw him out of the window as if he had been an offensive dog. She flung his hat and stick after him and slammed the window down. Then she stamped her feet in inarticulate rage, and rubbed and bit her mouth. It was one thing to play with a man’s passions and quite another to be defiled by them. Ida seethed with the fierce virtue of a young inexperienced and temperamentally cold woman. For a few moments she used very bad language indeed, and struggled with an impulse to ran after the “little puppy” and whip him in the street. But, remembering that she was making a heroic attempt to be a grande dame, she finally went into her bedroom and washed her face.

XVII

There was a knock on the front door. Ida, smoothing her hair, hastened to open it, glad of diversion. Ora stood there. For a moment the girls looked hard at each other, then burst into laughter.

“What’s up?” asked Ida. “You look----”

“My dear, it is I who should ask? Your face is crimson; you look as if you had just given someone a beating, and I met poor little Whalen, dusty, dishevelled, growling like a mad dog--he didn’t know me.”

“Well, I guess he won’t know himself for a while,” said Ida drily, leading the way into the parlour. “When he comes to he’ll have his work cut out to climb back to his little two-cent pedestal and fit on his battered halo.” She related the incident. “What do you know about that?” she demanded in conclusion. “Wouldn’t it come and get you?”

“I am afraid you have made an enemy. It is always best to let them down gently, save their pride--and--ah!--it isn’t customary to throw gentlemen out of the window!”

“Gentlemen!” snorted Ida. “He’s no gentleman. He not only kissed me with his horrid front teeth, but he insinuated that I was just languishing for him, the----” Once more Ida’s feelings overflowed in language not intended for print. “It made me so mad I’d have lammed him with the umbrella if we’d been in the hall.”

“Ida,” asked Ora abruptly, “would you have minded so much if he had been good-looking and attractive?”

“Well--perhaps--I guess in that case I’d simply have smacked him and let him get out quick by the front door. But I don’t want any man touching me. I’m a married woman.”

“But if you flirt and lead them on----”

“You said once yourself that American men understood the game and knew how to take their medicine.”

“I also said that they can fall more tiresomely in love than any other men. Of course the Whalens don’t count. But do you intend to go on making men fall in love with you and throwing them--metaphorically--out of the window?”

“Much chance I’ll get.”

“You’ll find plenty of chances in Europe. You are a remarkably beautiful woman. And Europeans take what we call flirting for shameless encouragement.”

“Well, I guess I’ll be getting experience of the world all right. And the Lord knows I’d like to be admired by men who have seen something. I can take care of myself, and Greg don’t need to worry.”

“I’ve no doubt of that. Of course you are awfully fond of Mr. Compton, aren’t you?” Ora spoke somewhat wistfully.

“Oh, yes; fond enough, fonder than a good many wives, I guess, for he’s kind and pleasant, and no earthly trouble about the house. But when a woman marries she gets a kid right there at the altar, and he’s her biggest kid till his false teeth drop out on his death-bed, and his great-grandchildren are feeding him through a tube. I don’t want any of the other sort of kids, and I guess I’m not what you call the maternal woman, but the Lord knows I’m a mother to Greg and a good one. I’d like to know what he’d do without me--that’s the only reason I hate leaving. He never thinks of changing his shoes when they’re wet, and half the time wouldn’t eat anything but his book if I didn’t put the stuff right in front of him.”

“Mark knows him almost as well as you do, and will look after him. My maid, who is practically my housekeeper, and an old family servant, will also keep a maternal eye on him.”

“He keeps himself tidy,” conceded Ida handsomely. “Wants clean things every day, but never knows where to find them. He’ll wander out into the kitchen where I’m cooking breakfast and ask where his socks are, and they always in the same drawer.”

“I fancy you’ve spoiled him.”

“Not I. I don’t hold with spoiling men. They’re born spoiled anyhow. I found Greg walking round in a dream when I married, and a pile of socks as high as the door knob he’d thrown away because they’d holes in them so tiny you could hardly see them. I darned every one, you bet, and he’s wearing them now, though he don’t know it. He’s like that, as dainty as a cat, and as helpless as a blind kitten. I am a wife and I know my duty,” concluded Ida virtuously.

“I certainly shall give Custer minute directions. I can’t have you worrying.”

“I’ll not worry, once I’m started. Don’t you fret! But what’s the matter with you, Ora? You look kinder excited, and kinder--well, harassed. How’s that out of the new pocket dictionary I’ve set up in my head?”

“I’ll soon have to look to my own vocabulary. Oh--I----”

“Something’s up. Spit it out. It’ll do you good.”

“Dear Ida! If you must use slang, do confine yourself to that which has passed through the mint of polite society. There is an abundance to choose from!”

“Don’t you worry; I won’t disgrace you. But I must let out a tuck occasionally when we’re alone. Greg wouldn’t let me go to any of the Club dances, and I scarcely ever see Ruby or Pearl, they’re so busy--to say nothing of myself!”

“Very well,” said Ora, laughing. “Let me be your safety valve, by all means.”

“Fire away.”

“Oh--how am I to tell you--I scarcely know, myself----”

“I guess you’re waking up. Ruby, who knows human nature like a book----”

Ora half rose. “Have you been talking me over with Miss Miller?” she asked haughtily.

“Not much. Hardly seen her since we met. But you interest Butte, you know. I guess they talk you over good and plenty. It was only a few days before you called that the Miller girls visited with me all day, and they talked a lot about you. Ruby said that if you’d come to out of the sleeping beauty stage, you’d make things hum, and that her fingers just itched to get at your skin and hair.”

“She said that to me once; and I don’t mind telling you that I called her in some time ago.”

“Oh, I’m not a bat. I’ve seen you looking prettier every day, and there’s only one way to do it, when you’ve let yourself go. I’ve had the benefit of Ruby’s advice for years, and I don’t propose to let myself go, not for a minute.”

“Right you are. And do live your life normally from day to day, developing normally. The awakening process, when the Nature that made you is no longer content to be a mere footstool for the mind, is almost as painful as coming to after drowning. I suddenly have become conscious of myself, as it were; I am interested in many more things--personal things--I seem to want far more of life than I did a few months ago----”

“In other words, you don’t know where you’re at.”

Ora laughed merrily. “My present condition could not be stated more patly!”

“Ora, I don’t want to pry into your confidence, and you’re not one to give much of that anyhow, but everybody in Butte knows that you’re not in love with Mark, and never were, nice as you treat him--only because you couldn’t be anything but a lady if you tried. Mrs. O’Neil, one day when she was having a massage, told Ruby all about your marriage. She said you were the most bewildered young thing she ever saw, and that Mark snapped you up before another young man could get a look at you. Now, I’ve known Mark all my life--he beaued my sister who died, for a year or two, and his mother’s cottage was just up the hill anyhow; and although he’s a good chap and a born hustler, and bound to get rich, he’s not the sort of man women fall in love with. You wouldn’t have fallen in love with him, if he’d been born a millionaire, and travelled and got Butte out of his system. And if your father had left you well off, you wouldn’t have looked at him. There’s men, bad and good--that’s to say, better--that women fall in love with, and there’s men bad and good that they don’t, not in a thousand years. Poor old Mark’s a Don’t all right. You ain’t angry at my saying all this, but Mark was like my own brother for years?”

“Oh, no, I am not angry. You are far too matter-of-fact. You might be discussing different grades of ore!”

“Well, that’s about it, and the poor ore can’t help itself, any more than the slag and gangue can, and Mark’s not either of those, you bet. He’s good metal, all right, only he didn’t come out of the Anaconda mine--What have you turned so red about? My! But you do blush easy!”

“It’s this--do you despise me--do you think I did wrong--Oh, I mean I have quite suddenly realised that I never should have married any man for so contemptible a reason. I should have gone to work----”

“Work? You?”

“Why not? Many a delicately nurtured woman has earned her bread.”

“The more fool she if she could get a man to earn it for her. That’s what they’re for. The Lord knows they pride themselves on the way they do it, being the stronger sex, and a lot more words. I guess I’d have married before Greg turned up if I’d met a man I was sure was going to make something of himself. You did just right to take a good husband and take him quick when you found yourself in a hole.”

“Yes--but----” Her blush deepened. “You see--” Ora never had had an intimate confidant. It was doubtful if she ever would have; not, at all events, a woman. But Ida, as she herself would have expressed it, could always see through a stone wall when there was a crack in it.

“Oh, shucks!” she said. “Don’t let that worry you. If you don’t feel that way first you do last, I guess. Most of us are bored to death, but women have stood it for a few thousand years, and I guess they can stand it for a few thousand more. We all of us have to pay high for anything we want. That’s about the size of it. Forget it.”

“Thanks, dear, you console me.” Ora smiled with closed eyes, but she was thrilled with a sudden inexplicable longing; like other of her recent sensations, it puzzled and alarmed her.

“Ora!” exclaimed Ida suddenly. “There’s one thing that’s just as sure as death and taxes; and knowing men and knowing life don’t help women one little bit. It’s this: A woman’s got to have her love affair sooner or later. If she marries for love she’s pretty safe, for ten or fifteen years, anyhow. But if she doesn’t, well, she’ll get it in the neck sooner or later--and it’ll be about the time she begins to sit up and take notice. She’s a regular magnet then, too. So watch out.”

Ora opened her eyes. They looked like steel. “I have never given a thought to love. There is nothing I want less. I shall continue to make Mark as good a wife as I know how to be----”

“Oh, I’m not saying you’ll go off the hooks, like some I could mention in your own bunch, but if the man comes along you’ll fall in love all right. Might as well try to stop a waterfall from jumping over the rocks. I’m not so dead sure I do know what you’d do. Pride, and high breeding, and duty would pull one way, but--well, I guess when you marble women get waked up good and plenty, what they call roused, you’re the worst kind. A considerable number of other things would pull from the opposite direction, and one of them would be the man.”

“Ida!” said Ora, aghast. “How do you know so much? Your opportunities have been very limited.”

“Oh, have they? Wasn’t I born and brought up in a mining camp? Butte is some education, believe me. I ran straight all right, not only because the sporting life had no charms for me but because I figured on moving over one of these days to Millionaire Gulch. But it wasn’t for want of opportunity, and the same opportunities were handed over by men of your crowd--or fixin’ to be. Besides, some women are born wise that way, I guess, and I’m one of ’em. You’ve been living in a sort of self-made heaven all your life, with only books for inhabitants. I could put you wise every day in the week.”

“It is true that although I saw a good deal of life while my mother lived so much in the world, and always have been deeply interested in the work of the psychological novelists, particularly the Europeans--I--well, I never applied it to my--never thought much about it until lately. I do not seem to know myself the least little bit.”

“I guess it’ll be me--Oh, Lord, I--taking you to Europe, not you me. I’ll see that you don’t get into mischief, for I’d hate like the dickens to have you go to pieces over any man. Not one of them that ever lived since Adam is worth it. They’re all right to marry, all things being equal, but to sacrifice your life for, nixie. Any style of man you are partial to? I’ll keep his sort off with a broom.”

“I’ve never gone so far as even to think----”

“Every woman has her style in men,” said Ida firmly. “I heard of a woman once who had three husbands and each one had a wart on his nose.”

“Oh, you are funny! I have heard that a woman falls in love with a type, not with the man, and, like all epigrams, that one contains a half-truth. I had two or three girlish fancies; one was an Austrian officer, another a French nobleman--and not impecunious--he wasn’t a fortune hunter. The third was a New Yorker who fell in love with my cousin and married her. I had a few heart spasms over him, in particular; possibly because he was quite out of reach. It is true that they were all more of or less of a type--tall and thin and dark, with something very keen and clever and modern in their lean--rather hard faces.”

“Hi!” cried Ida.

“What is the matter? You look at me as if you had seen a ghost.”

Ida threw back her head and laughed, showing her sharp little white teeth, and straining her throat until the firm flesh looked thin and drawn, over too strong muscles. “Oh, Lord! I was just thinking what a lot of trouble I’m in for, playing dragon to my lily-white lady. I guess about half the men in the world are brunettes, fat or lean. Say, are you going to the Prom? It’s only a month off.”

“I hadn’t thought about it. Probably. I have been asked to be a patroness, and Mark is sure to want to go. Have you decided what to wear?”

“Ma gave me a coral-red silk when I married, and I’m going to make it over and veil it with black net.”

“Splendid!” cried Ora warmly. “Bring it up to the house. Mrs. Finley is really an excellent seamstress. We’ll all take a hand. It will be great fun. And you will look stunning.”

“What will you wear?”

“I expect some gowns from my New York dressmaker in a few days. It will depend upon the state of my complexion, I fancy.”

XVIII

Ora received another budget of Ida’s philosophy on the day before the Prom; she had taken her a long string of pink coral she had found among her old possessions, and after Ida had wound it in her hair and round her neck, and finally tried on her gown, and then draped Ora successively in various scarves, remnants of her own wedding finery--being almost as interested in the new complexion as Ora herself--they had suddenly come to the conclusion that while in Europe they would assume the mental attitude of girls travelling without a chaperon. They would see the world from the independent girl’s point of view, flirt like girls, not like married women (which at least would save their consciences), force men to accept the phenomenon. For a time they discussed the superior advantages of being young widows, but, alluring and even thrilling as were the possibilities evoked, they dismissed the alternative on the ground that it might prove a bore always to be on the defensive; man making no secret of his attitude toward widows. Besides, they felt a delicacy about burying their indulgent husbands even in mental effigy. As counterfeit girls they could crowd enough excitement into six months to serve them in memory during long periods of Butte.

“It will be some bluff,” cried Ida. “And believe me, we’ll have the time of our lives. And no remorse in mine. I intend to flirt the limit, for I’m just ready to quit being a mother for a while and see a man’s eyes kindle when he comes nigh--see him playing about at the end of a string. I didn’t have near enough of it even when I had half Butte at my feet--excuse what sounds like conceit but is cold fact. Now, I’m going to light up every man I take a fancy to. I don’t care an abandoned prospect hole whether I hurt ’em or not. All they are good for is to give us a good time.”

“Ida!” Ora was aghast as she often had been before at these naked feminine revelations. “You talk like a man-eater. I hope to heaven I am not like that down deep.”

“Oh, maybe you won’t be so bad because you haven’t got as much vanity. Mine’s insatiable, I guess, and good old Mother Nature taught me the trick of covering it up with the don’t-care-a-damn air combined with the come-hither eye. That does the trick. And they get what hurt’s going. I don’t. You’ll cultivate men, thinking it’s your vanity waked up, or mere youth, or because it’s time to have a fling, but what you really are after is the one and only man. The Companion. The Sympathetic Soul. The Mate. All that rot. He don’t exist, kiddo. He’s the modern immaculate conception, and he’s generally stillborn; the bungling doctor being the plain unadulterated male inside of himself. You’ve got to be your own companion, and if you want happiness you can get it by expecting just nothing of men. Use them. Throw them on the ash heap. Pass on to the next. Quit sitting on the watch tower with your eyes trained on the horizon for the prince that is born and lives and dies in a woman’s imagination.”

“I have seen happy--united couples--who had been married for years.”

“Oh, yes; some couples are born to jog along together, and some wives are born man-tamers, and get a lot of satisfaction out of it. But you’re much too high-falutin’ for that. You’ll always dream of the impossible--not only in man but of what he’s got to give--which ain’t much. And I didn’t need all them--those--psychological and problem and worldly novels you made me read, translated from half a dozen languages, either. You take my advice, Ora, and don’t start off on any fool hunt for an ideal. Men are just matter-of-fact two-legged animals, and as selfish as a few thousand years of fool women have naturally made them. He does well while he’s courting because he’s naturally good at bluff. But every bit of romance oozes out of him after he’s eaten his first breakfast of ham and eggs at home. We can keep up the bluff forever. Men can’t. Each one of them’s got a kid twin brother inside that plays marbles till he dies and makes you feel older every day. No, sir! If I ever had any delusions, I’ve got over them good and plenty. And I thank the Lord,” she added piously.

“I think that rather adorable, you know: the eternal boy. And I fancy it is all that saves men from becoming horrors; in this country, at least--when you consider the unending struggle, and strain, and sordid business of money getting. They use up all their bluff in the battle of life, poor things. Why shouldn’t they be natural with us?...”

Ora was recalling this conversation as she sat in her bedroom on the following evening. Her elemental yet uncannily sophisticated friend had a way of crashing chords out of jealously hidden nerves, which no exercise of will could disconnect from the logical parts of the brain. If it were true that what her now rampant ego, too long starved, really demanded was man and romance, she wished she had let herself run to seed until it was too late to reclaim her lost beauty and adventure into temptation. But a glance into the mirror deprived her of any further desire to join the vast sisterhood of unattractive females. Moreover, she had faith in the dominance of her will and common sense, and if her beauty would help her to the mental contacts she craved with brilliant and interesting men, far be it from her to execrate it.

She dismissed the mood of self-analysis impatiently and opened her wardrobe, although half inclined not to attend the Prom. She was one of the patronesses, but her presence was not essential. It was pre-eminently the night of nights for young folks--brownies and squabs--and the absence of a married woman of twenty-six would pass unrecorded. Not a man in Butte interested her personally, nor was she in a frame of mind to be interested by any of the too specialised products of the West. Nor was she inordinately fond of dancing; there really was no object in going to this party save to witness the début and possible triumph of her protégée.

But she felt something more than indifference toward this party. It was as if a gong sounded a warning in the depths of her brain--in her subconsciousness, perhaps, where instinct, that child of ancestral experience, dwelt. But even while she hesitated she knew that she should go, and she took one of her new gowns from a long drawer, and then began to arrange her hair.

It was now some five months since Miss Ruby Miller had taken her in hand, and if the young woman’s bank account was heavier her pride as an artist far outweighed it. Ora’s hair was soft, abundant, the colour of warm ashes. The skin of her face was as white and transparent, as “pearly” to use its doctor’s own descriptive word, as the fine protected surface of her slender throat, her thin but by no means bony neck. Her lips were pink; they never would be red; and after one taste of “lip stick,” Ora had declined to have them improved by art. But they were a soft country-rose pink and suited her clear whiteness far better than scarlet. Her eyes, never so clear and startling as now, lighted up the cold whiteness of her face and made her pink mouth look childish and somewhat pathetic. If her lips had been red, her face would have had the sinister suggestion so many women achieve with the assistance of art; as it was she looked by no means harmless as she smiled at herself in the mirror and coiled her hair softly on the top of her head. After some experimenting she had decided that she could not improve upon an arrangement which for the present at least was all her own.

She rang for Custer to hook her gown. It was a very soft gown of white satin draped about the bust with lace and chiffon. It was cut to the waist line in the back and almost as low in front, for her figure was hardly more developed than a growing girl’s; and it was unrelieved by colour. She had already put on the string of pearls her mother had hidden when the other jewels were sold in Paris. Altogether it was a costume she would not have dared to wear even two months ago, when a touch of colour on the bodice or in her hair was necessary to divert attention from her spoiled complexion.

Custer had been her mother’s maid for many years and had returned with her to Butte. After an interval of employment elsewhere, she had come to Ora as soon as Mark had built his house. She hooked the gown, pinned up a stray lock with an invisible hairpin, shook out the little train, and stood off.

“It reminds me of the way your mother used to look,” she said, “and you’re even prettier than she was, Miss Ora--now. But I fancy you’ll be more comfortable in this gown when you wear it in London. These ladies dress smartly enough, but never as low as the English ladies do, leastways out here. I fancy it’s the Western men. They don’t seem to approve of showing too much.”

“Well, I think I’ll rather enjoy startling the natives. Quick--give me my wrap! I hear Mr. Blake coming. No controversy here.”

XIX

The Prom was held not in the School of Mines but in The Coliseum, a large hall over a saloon and garage, half way between The Hill and The Flat, requisitioned by all classes when the weather forbade the use of Columbia Gardens. The walls were covered with the School colours, copper and green, flags, and college pennants. The ceiling was a network of electric lights with coloured globes, copper and green, fluttering paper and sprays of apple blossoms, brought from far! “Cozy corners” looked like fragments of a lower altitude, and the faithful palm was on duty everywhere. The orchestra, on a suspended balcony in the centre of the room, was invisible within the same elaborate scheme of decoration.

When Ora entered with her husband the Grand March had finished and the instruments were tuning for a waltz. She saw Ida standing directly under the orchestra surrounded by several men who patently were clamouring for dances. Even in that great room full of women dressed from New York and Paris, Ida looked distinctive and superb. Ora smiled proudly, as she observed her, quite oblivious that the throng of men and women and indignant “squabs,” who had been discussing the wife of Gregory Compton, had transferred their attention to the dazzling apparition in white. Ida wore her gown of coral silk, whose flimsiness was concealed under a mist of black shadow lace. The coral beads clasped her strong white throat and fell to her supple waist. There was a twist of coral tulle in her black hair, which was arranged in the rolling fashion of the moment, obeyed by every other woman in the room save Ora Blake. And her cheeks, her lips, were as coral as the fruit of the sea. She had powdered her face lightly to preserve its tone through exercise and heat. All the arrogance of youth and beauty and powerful magnetism was expressed in the high poise of her head; a faint smile of triumph curved above her little white teeth; her body was in perfect repose yet as alert as that of a healthy young cat. The waltz began and she glided off in the arm of a young mining engineer from the East. She danced precisely as the best-bred women in the room danced (early in the evening): ease without abandon, dignity without stiffness.

“Heavens, but the American woman is adaptable!” thought Ora. “I never realised before exactly what that time-worn platitude meant. Probably the standards in the Ida set are not so different from ours, after all. As for looks and carriage she might have three generations behind her. Is it democracy or the actress instinct of woman--permitted its full development in this country for the first time in her history?”

This was not entirely a monologue, but addressed for the most part to Professor Becke, one of the most distinguished instructors of the School of Mines, and one of the men she liked best in Butte. He was a tall fair man, with a keen thin fimbriated face, and long fine hands. Ora made a point of asking him to dine with her once or twice a month.

He led the way to two of the chairs on the side of the hall after she had announced that she did not intend to dance.

“But this is the first party we have had for weeks,” he said. “They won’t leave you to me for long.”

“I don’t feel in the mood for dancing. Besides,” she added with a new daring, “I’m all in white and looking very white once more; I don’t want to get warm and spoil the effect.”

He stared into her challenging eyes as if he saw her for the first time. In that room, full of colour and of vivid women and young girls, she produced an almost disconcerting effect with her statuesque beauty, her gleaming whiteness, her frail white body so daringly displayed in its white gown. And, oddly enough, to those staring at her, she made the other women look not only commonplace but cold.

Ora smiled to herself; she was quite aware of the impression at work, not only on the scientific brain, but on others more readily responsive; she had considered the prudence of practising on Butte before departing for wider fields.

The Professor changed colour, but replied steadily: “Fancy you two extraordinary creatures loose in Europe! You should take a bodyguard. I can understand Compton giving his consent, for he is the kind of man that wouldn’t remember whether his wife were twenty or forty at the end of his honeymoon, and there can be little between them in any case. But Blake!”

“Oh, we’ll come home without a scandal,” said Ora lightly. “Ida is the reverse of what she looks, and I--well, I am the proverbial ‘cold’ American woman--that the European anathematises. Ida, of course, looks the siren, and I shall have some trouble protecting her, until she learns how far she can go. But at least I am forewarned.”

“I fancy you will have more trouble protecting yourself!” Professor Becke’s voice was not as even as usual. His intellect was brilliant, and illuminating, and never more so than when in the society of this young woman whom heretofore he had admired merely as a vivacious and exceptional mind; but, startling as this revelation of subtle and alluring womanhood was, he remembered that he was no longer young and that he had an admirable wife with an eagle eye; he had no intention of scorching his fingers in the attempt to light a flame that would guide him to the rocks even were he invited to apply the torch. But he was a man and he sighed a little for his vanished youth. If he had been twenty years younger he fancied that he would have forgotten his good lady and risked burning his heart out. He moved his eyes away deliberately and they rested on Mark Blake, mopping his scarlet face after a lively waltz. He was a kindly man, but all that was deathlessly masculine in him grinned with a cynical satisfaction.

“Who is that?” asked Ora abruptly, and forgetting a faint sensation of pique.

“Ah! Who?”

She indicated a man leaning against one of the doorways, and looking over the crowd with unseeing eyes. “Heavens! What a jaw! Is he as ‘strong’ as he looks, or is he one of Bismarck’s wooden posts painted to look like a man of iron?--Why, it’s----”

“That is Gregory Compton, and he is no wooden post, believe me.”

“I haven’t seen him for years. _Can_ any man be as strong as _he_ looks?”

“Probably not. He hasn’t had time to discover his master weaknesses yet, so I don’t pretend to guess at them myself. At present he is too absorbed in squeezing our poor brains dry----”

“Doesn’t he ever smile?”

“So rarely that the boys, who have a nickname for all their fellow students, call him ‘Sunny Jim.’”

“What do you think of his wife?” asked Ora abruptly. She hardly knew why she asked the question, nor why she felt a secret glow at the expected answer.

The Professor turned his appraising eye upon the substantial vision in coral and black that tonight had been pronounced the handsomest woman in Butte. “There could be no finer example of the obvious. All her goods are in the front window. There are no surprises behind that superlative beauty; certainly no revelations.”

“I wonder! Ida is far cleverer than you think, and quite capable of affording your sex a good deal in the way of surprises, not to say shocks.”

“Not in the way I mean--not as you will do, worse luck for my helpless sex. There is no soul there, and, I fancy, little heart. She is the last woman Gregory Compton should have married.”

“Why?” Ora tried to look bored but polite.

“Oh--whatever she may have for other men she has nothing for him. She looks the concentrated essence of female--American female--egoism. Compton needs a woman who would give him companionship when he wanted it, and, at the same time, be willing in service.”

Ora bristled. “Service? How like a man. Are we still expected to serve men? I thought the world was moving on.”

Professor Becke, who, like most men married to a domestic commander-in-chief, was strenuously opposed to giving women any powers backed up by law, asked with cold reserve: “Are you a suffragette?”

Ora laughed. “Not yet. But I just escaped being born in the Twentieth Century. I belong to it at all events.”

“So you do, but you never have been in love----” He broke off in embarrassment; he had forgotten for the moment that this white virginal creature had been married for six years. She showed no resentment, for she barely had heard him; she was looking at Gregory Compton again, and concluding that he might appeal strongly to the supplementary female, but must antagonise women whose highly specialised intellects, at home only on the heights of civilisation, had submerged their primal inheritance.

Professor Becke went on:

“Even a clever woman’s best career is a man. If you women develop beyond nature that powerful old tyrant will simply snuff you out.”

“Well, man will go too. That may be our final triumph.”

“Atlantis over again! And quite in order that the race should perish through the excesses of woman. Then Nature, having wiped her slate clean with a whoop, will begin all over again and precisely where she did before. No doubt she will permit a few records to survive as a warning.”

“You may be right--but, although I have an idea I shall one day want to justify my existence by being of some use, it won’t be because my sex instinct has got the better of my intelligence. But I refuse to think of that until I have had a royal good time for a few years.”

“That is your right,” he said impulsively. “You are altogether exceptional--and you have had six years of Butte! I am glad your mine has panned out so splendidly. There is quite an excitement in the Sampling Works----”

“What?” Ora forgot Gregory Compton. “I knew the mine was doing well----”

“Surely you know that your profits in royalties already must be something over a hundred thousand dollars----” He stopped in confusion.

Ora’s face was radiant and she never had liked Mark as sincerely as at that moment. “It is just like him! He wanted to wait and give me a great surprise--my husband, I mean.”

“And I have spoilt it! I am really sorry. Please don’t tell him.”

“I won’t. And I’ll be the most surprised woman in the world when he takes me to the bank to sign my letter of credit. You needn’t mind. I’ll have the fun of thinking about it for five months--and rolling it up in my imagination. Ah!”

“Compton has recognised you, I think.”

Ora had met the long narrow concentrated gaze of her husband’s friend. She bowed slightly. Compton made a step forward, hesitated, braced himself, and walked toward her.

“A constitutionally shy man, but a brave one,” said Professor Becke with a grim smile, as he rose to resign his seat. “A strong magnet has pulled up many a sinking heart. Good evening, Compton. Glad you honour our party, even if you don’t dance.”

“I intend to ask Mrs. Blake to dance.” Gregory betrayed nothing of his inner trepidation although he did not smile. He could always rely upon the stern mask into which he had trained his visage not to betray him.

Ora, oblivious of her resolution not to dance, rose and placed her hand on his shoulder, smiling an absent farewell to Professor Becke. For a moment she forgot her resentful interest in this man in her astonishment that he danced so well. She had the impression of dancing with a light supple creature of the woods, one who could be quite abandoned if he chose, although he held her as if he were embracing a feather. She wondered if it were his drop of aboriginal blood and looked up suddenly. To her surprise he was smiling, and his smile so altered the immobility of his face that she lost her breath.

“I feel as if I were dancing with a snowflake,” was his unexpected remark.

“You look the last man to pay compliments and murmur sweet nothings.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“Perhaps I am. I rather liked your attitude--expression, rather--of cool superiority.”

“Why don’t you use the word prig?”

“Oh, no!--Well, perhaps that is what I did mean.”

He stopped short, regardless of the annoyance he caused several impetuous couples. “If you did I shall leave you right here.”

“I did not. Please go on. Everybody is staring at us. You took me completely by surprise.”

“I? Why?”

“You are the last man I should expect the usual small talk from.”

“Small talk? Heavens knows I have none of that. Girls used to talk my head off in self-defence. I merely said what I thought. What did you expect me to talk about?”

“Oh--mines, I suppose.” Again, to her surprise, his face lit up as if by an inner and jealously hidden torch. But he said soberly:

“Well, there is no more interesting subject. Never has been since the world began. Where shall we find a seat?”

The waltz was over. The chairs were filling. Young couples were flitting toward the embowered corners.

“Let’s go outside,” he said abruptly.

“What? On the street? And nobody goes out of doors from a ballroom in June.”

“Good reason for going. Come with me.”

He led her to the cloak-room. “Get your wrap,” he said.

Ora frowned, but she asked for her heavy white woollen wrap and put it on; then automatically followed him down the stairs and into the street.

“Why don’t you get your coat and hat?” she asked, still dazed. “It’s cold, you know.”

“I never was cold in my life,” he said contemptuously. He hailed a taxi. “I must go up to the School of Mines, and ask the result of some assaying,” he added as he almost lifted her in. “Then we can talk up there. May I smoke?”

“I don’t care what you do.”

He smiled directly into her resentful eyes this time and tucked the lap-robe about her.

XX

He apparently forgot her during the short drive and stared through the open window of the cab, his thoughts, no doubt, in the assay room of the School, where several students, as ardent as himself, were experimenting with ore they had managed to secure from a recently opened mine. Ora’s resentment vanished, partly because she reflected that a new and original experience was a boon to be grateful for in Butte, but more because she was thrilled with the sense of adventure. Her woman’s instinct gave assurance that he had no intention of making love to her, but it also whispered that, whether she liked or disliked him when the adventure was over, she would have something to remember. And it was the first time she ever had indulged in recklessness. Butte would be by the ears on the morrow if it learned of her escapade.

When they reached the dark School of Mines he dismissed the taxi, and said to Ora, “Wait for me here. I shan’t be a moment.”

He disappeared and Ora shrugged her shoulders and sat down on the steps. He returned in a few moments and extended himself over several steps below her.

“Comfortable?” he asked.

“Very!”

“It’s a night, isn’t it?” he asked abruptly.

He was not looking at her but at the low sulphurous blue sky, with its jewelled lattice, white, yellow, green, blue. There were no tree tops to rustle, but from the window below came the voluptuous strains of the Merry Widow waltz, mingling incongruously with the raucous noises of the sleepless town: the roaring street-cars, the blasts of engines, the monstrous purr of motor-cats.

“If we could cut out that jungle,” he said with a sigh. “Are you warm enough?” He pulled the cloak about the lower part of her body. “I should have taken the rug from the cab----”

“I am warm enough,” she said impatiently, and what she longed to say was, “How in heaven’s name did you marry Ida Hook?” He had transferred his gaze to the city and she studied his face. Then she understood. In spite of its intense reserve and detachment, its strength and power, its thin sensitive mouth, it was the most passionate face she had ever seen. As a matter of fact she had been at pains to ignore the purely masculine side of men, her fastidious mind never indulging in comparisons. She half rose with a sense of panic. Again he looked up solicitously.

“I am sure you are not comfortable. I could find you some cushions----”

“Please don’t. So you love beauty?” She was deeply annoyed with herself, but could think of nothing less banal. He certainly was not easy to talk to.

“Don’t you? It would be odd if you didn’t. One reason I brought you up up here was because I wanted to look at you in the starlight where you belong--the cold starlight--not in that crowded gaudy room full of mere human beings.”

“Are you a poet? I have somehow received the impression that you are a mere walking ambition.”

“I’m no poet if you mean one of those writing fellows.” His tone expressed unmitigated scorn.

“Well, no doubt you have read a great deal of poetry, little as one would suspect it.”

“Never read a line of it except when I had to decline it at school--any more than I’ve ever read a line of fiction.”

“Well, you’ve missed a great deal,” said Ora tartly. “Poetry is an essential part of the beauty of the world, which you seem to appreciate. And the best of fiction is the best expression of current history. What do you think when you star-gaze?”

“You mean, can I think at all when I haven’t read what other men have thought?”

“No.--No doubt the most original brains are those that have not read too much, are not choked up.” Ora made this admission reluctantly, but he had caught her fairly. “Tell me at least what the stars suggest to you. About everything has been said of them that can be said. The poor old stars have been worked to death.”

“The stars above Montana are watchfires protecting the treasure below. Perhaps they are bits of her treasures, gold, silver, copper, sapphire, that flew upward in the final cataclysm.”

“I don’t know whether that is poetical or gross materialism.”

“No mines, no poets. Nearly all conquest from the dawn of history down to the Boer War has had the acquisition of mineral wealth as its real object. The civilisation that follows is incidental; it merely means that the strongest race, which, of course, knows the most, wins. If ever we have a war with Mexico, what will be the cause? Mines. Incidentally we will civilise her. Peru, Mexico, India, the Americas--all have been invaded in their turn by more civilised nations, and all after plunder. They gave as much as they took, but little they cared about that. What opened up California? This great Northwest? Prospectors in search of gold. Excuse this lecture. I am the least talkative of men, but you have jarred my brain, somehow. Read the history of mines and mining if you want romance.”

“As a matter of fact few things interest me more. I am so glad my mine has been leased for a year only. When that is up I am going to mine it myself. I’ll build a bungalow out there and go down every day. Perhaps in time I could be my own manager. At all events, think of the excitement of watching the ore as it comes up the shaft; of running through a lean vein and coming suddenly upon a chamber of an entirely different kind of ore from what you had been taking out. Great shoots full of free gold! Wire gold! Or that crisp brown-gold that looks as if it were boiling out of the ore and makes one want to bite it! Why are you staring so at me?”

His eyes were more widely opened and brilliant than she had seen them. “Do you mean that?” he asked. “I’ve a great notion to tell you something that I’ve not told anyone.”

“Do tell me!”

She leaned down eagerly. She had dismissed the feeling of panic as something to be forgotten as quickly as possible. But her brain was on fire to penetrate his. She felt an extraordinary mental stimulation. But he relapsed into absolute silence, although he held his head, lowered again, at an angle that suggested he might be thinking intently. She moved impatiently, but he sat still, staring downward, his eyes narrow once more. She noticed irrelevantly how black his hair was, and her white hand went out stealthily as if magnetised, but was immediately restored to order. In the vibrating silence she had another glimmer of understanding. He wanted to tell her something personal, but his natural secretiveness and habit of reserve were engaged in a struggle with the unusual impulse. She shifted the ground.

“I wish you would tell me something of your boyhood,” she said abruptly.

He looked up in astonishment. “I never talk about myself----”

“How very egoistical.”

“Ego----”

“No, I did not say egotistical.”

“Ah!” There was another pause, although he looked at her with a frown. “I have talked to you more than I ever talk to anyone,” he said resentfully.

“It is the stars, to say nothing of the isolation. We might be up on one of your escaped nuggets. Remember that I have heard of you constantly for six years--and met you before on one of those occasions when all persons look alike. How could I escape curiosity?”

“I brought you out to look at in the proper setting. I can’t say I had any desire to talk to you. I suppose I should not keep you out here----”

“I am much happier and more comfortable than in that hot room. But surely you need more recreation. Why do you never go to dances?”

“Dances? I? I only went tonight----” He, too, apparently, was determined to keep their respective spouses out of the conversation, for he veered off quickly. “It is a sort of religion to attend the Prom even if you only show yourself. I was about to beat a retreat when I saw you. Of course it was my duty to shake hands. Besides, I wanted to see if you were real.” And he smiled up into her eyes.

“Do you know that we are flirting?”

“Well, let us flirt,” he replied comfortably. “I haven’t the least idea what it is, but I am not a bit in love with you, if that is what you mean.”

Ora drew herself up rigidly. “Well, you are----” she began, aware that she had a temper. Then she laughed. Why quarrel with a novel experience? Her anger turned into a more subtle emotion. She was well aware of the dazzling brightness of her eyes. She leaned forward and concentrated her mind in an attempt to project her magnetism through them, although again with a feeling of panic; it was too much like the magnet rushing out to the iron.

He returned that powerful gaze unmoved, although an expression of perplexity crossed his own eyes. She was disconcerted and asked lamely:

“Is it true that you used to run away and prospect in the mountains?”

His face lit up with an enthusiasm her fascinations had been unable to inspire; and a richer note came into his voice. “I was eleven the first time and stayed out for six months. Two years after I ran away again. The next time I went with my father’s permission. I worked in one of the Butte mines one summer--but otherwise--well, you see, there is a good deal to do on a ranch. This is the first time I have been able to do as I please.”

Ora looked at his long slim figure, his brown hands that tonight, at least, expressed a sort of cruel deliberate repose. Whatever they may have been in their ranch days they were smooth and well cared for now.

“Somehow, I can’t see you handling a pick,” she said doubtfully. “Is it true that you intend to work in the mines all summer?”