Chapter VIII: The Life Force

If Mason had been in the _jeunesse dorée_ he must now have gone to Monte Carlo to buck the tiger or to India to shoot him.

As it was, he smoked all night and turned up at the office half an hour ahead of time in a voluble, erratic mood, brought about by suppressing so much excitement within himself. If he had known how to tell his troubles to a friend over a glass of beer he might have had an easier time of it in his life. But he wasn't that sort. He took things hard and kept them in.

He decided that the best thing to do with his sentiment for Georgia was to strangle it. Whenever he caught himself thinking of her, which would certainly be often at first, he must turn his mind away. He must avoid seeing her; if they met accidentally he would give no further sign than a curt nod.

He remembered the farmers used to say that there was one thing to do with Canada thistles--keep them under, never let the sun shine on them. His love for this other man's wife was like a thistle. He must keep it under, never let the sun shine on it.

He did it thoroughly. He nodded to her in the most indifferent way in the world when they happened to meet, but he found no occasion to stop at her desk to chat an instant. Two weeks of his change of manner began to pique her. He was acting in a rather absurd way, she thought. After all they weren't lovers who had quarreled, but simply acquaintances, friends after a fashion, fellow workers. Why shouldn't they continue to be friends? It would be amusing to have some one besides the family and the girls to talk to.

She would not let him treat her in this stiff way any longer, just because she had had the bad luck to marry a bad man years before. What rubbish that was. And what self-consciousness on his part. Men had a very guilty way of looking at things.

They met quite or almost quite by accident in front of the office building during the noon hour of the following day. He was about to pass without stopping.

"How do you do, Mr. Stevens?" Her voice was quite distinct.

So he turned and lifted his hat. "How do you do!"

She did not precisely move toward him, but she did so contrive the pause that it was up to him, if he weren't to be boorish, to stop for a moment and speak with her.

She threw a disarming candor into her first question. "Is there any particular reason," said she, "why we are no longer friends?"

"Friends?"

"Yes. You've been frowning at me for about three weeks and I haven't the least idea how I've offended you."

He did not answer immediately and his expression hardened.

"There, you're doing it now," said she with apparent perplexity. "Why?"

"You know," he spoke doggedly.

"No, I don't."

"Yes you do, too," he answered curtly and roughly. "You do."

"Just as you please." She turned from him, apparently offended by his tone, slightly nodded and walked slowly away. She was of medium height, no more than that, and slender. A brute of a man bumped her with his shoulder as he passed her.

Stevens waited for the brute of a man, dug his elbow into his ribs and overtook her at the Madison Street corner.

"Miss--Mrs. Connor, I didn't mean to be rude."

"You were a little, you know."

"Will you excuse me?"

"Why, of course."

He didn't quite know what to do next, so he awkwardly extended his hand. She took it with a man-to-man shake of wiping out the score, which completely demolished his cynical attitude in reference to platonic friendship.

"Where were you bound for?" he asked.

"Nowhere, just strolling. Over to the lake front for a breath of air."

"May I walk along?"

"Surely."

On their way back they reflected that they had been without lunch, so they stopped at a drug store for a malted milk with egg, chocolate flavor, nutmeg on top.

They touched their glasses together.

"It's very nourishing," said he with wonderment.

"Very," she replied, delightedly; "very."

They returned to their work in that state of high elation induced by interviews such as theirs, wherein the spoken words mean twenty times what they say--and more.