Chapter XXXIII

So Melissa went to dinner, with Roderick, at a place up the river, that first night, and upon other nights, and at other places, she went to dinner with him a number of times thereafter.

He progressed so frankly from acquaintance to friendship, from friendship to things warmer, making no bones at any time of the sincerity of his interest, the honorable quality, so to speak, of his intentions, that Melissa had only to look on, quiescent, to be not too unresponsive ... and see the pleasantest, safest sort of future unroll itself neatly before her.

She began to feel that she possessed some quality of appeal, quite beyond her own volition, for men who possessed nothing for her.

Murdock and Austin and Luke ... now Roderick!

Her year had been fruitful of opportunity. All that she asked for had been poured into her lap. This she had put away from her and that she had let slip. If she were to make her fortune at all, remained acceptance of the one now available suitor.

“Roderick,” the Marchesa assured her, “has never been in love before. I have known him all his life. If you let him get away from you ... you deserve to spend the rest of your days in an office, pecking at a typewriter....” she added with sinister coolness--“and so far as I am concerned, my dear Melissa--that is exactly what you will do.”

“I believe that was our understanding,” said Melissa.

The two stared at each other coldly. A kind of hatred tinctured with unwilling respect existed between them.

“If you marry him--you need not be afraid--I shall let you alone,” said the Marchesa as if she read Melissa’s thought, and were amused by it.

“He has not asked me to marry him,” said Melissa ... “so why discuss it?”

“If he hasn’t,” retorted the Marchesa nibbling the edge of her fan with sharp yellow little teeth--“it’s because you haven’t wanted him to. Don’t attempt to deceive me, my dear--you’re not clever enough, by half. Save your pretty chicaneries for Roderick. _He_ is not clever enough for _you_!”

Which was all of it so--as Melissa very well knew. But liked the Marchesa none the better for putting things thus straightly.

Roderick had shortly to be taken--or left.

Melissa let down her guard, the merest fraction and he came on with a rush. She withdrew and he stopped--the soul of decent consideration. An old game but one, as the Marchesa had observed, which did not change in its essentials.

It was on the day when Melissa passed Luke and Em’ly Armistead on Fifth Avenue together, that she abruptly stopped maneuvering and decided to let Roderick have his say.

Not that Luke and Em’ly saw Melissa. Not that a word passed or a sign. Merely, through the window of her taxi, returning from a particularly depressing Shakespearean matinee, Melissa caught sight of Luke’s dark head--uncovered, beside Em’ly’s crimson-hatted blond one. They were parting on a corner. Laughing into each other’s eyes. A parting which apparently had no need of haste.

And Melissa remembered. Em’ly had always wanted Luke. In his loneliness and present disillusionment she could very likely have him. His next fata morgana. Any woman will understand why Melissa, not wanting Luke herself yet went home and sat down to the telephone ... called Roderick’s number....

What came after is not so easy of explanation.

She drove and dined that night with Roderick, she let him bring her back to the apartment, fairly early, she stood with him upon her narrow balcony and looked across the Park through bloomy breathless shadows ... she let him tell her how he had always loved those rooms, how he loved them twice as much, now ... but that he never wanted to live in them again--unless--she were living in them, too....

Very sturdy in his love-making, Roderick, perhaps a shade pathetic, because so doggedly in earnest ... he panted a little, it is to be feared, and twice wiped his forehead upon a spotless linen handkerchief. In spite of which it seemed at first as if he had a chance--every chance--It was not until he put his arms about Melissa unexpectedly, that she had jerked away from him and went back into the room, tears streaming down her face.

Roderick followed--not unnaturally.

“Have I said something--to hurt you?” he asked anxiously.

“Nothing--” said Melissa, “not that!”

She couldn’t tell him that at the window--at her very shoulder--the man of the picture had seemed suddenly to stand, looking at her curiously, quietly, with that arrogant, half-smiling question in his eyes.

And Melissa couldn’t betray him--that was all. She knew, at last, to what she was true.

Knowing, however late the hour, she set her teeth and went through with it blindly. The thing that was her ultimate choice. The thing that had no reality, that transcended reality.

She told the Marchesa’s nephew she didn’t love him. That she couldn’t marry him. That she was sick with shame to have let him think she might.

“Good Lord--” said he comfortingly, “that’s my mistake--not yours! Maybe I’ve been in too much of a rush ... don’t make this final ... wait--just be friends--and let me ask you again....”

“It’s no use,” said Melissa. She said it till he believed her.

She said one other thing when he was leaving her, crushing her hand in his warm, moist one, looking at her out of hungry, honest eyes, trying to carry off his hard luck with a jest--and not succeeding notably.

“Will you tell your aunt--at once--about this evening?” asked Melissa.

“If you want me to, I will--but--”

“I’d like her to know. She’s been--kind--to me.”

“Then can’t you be a little--kinder to _her_? She’d be pleased as Punch to have you for a niece ... why--she sent me some kind of a crazy cable--before I left Japan--wanted to get me back here--to meet you.... Couldn’t you....”

“Don’t say it--again--I can’t....”

“All right--I won’t. You’ll let me see you again--soon--anyhow?”

“I don’t know--I won’t promise.”

“Why not--for pity’s sake! You’ll still have friends--won’t you?”

“Please--I want you to go, now--” said Melissa unsteadily. And he went.

As for her still having friends, in that especial moment she really hadn’t anything--having traded substance for shadow and spent her all in the trade.

To-morrow, the Marchesa--after the Marchesa, the deluge.

Melissa slept well, that night. She knew at last what it was that she wanted.

Not the slightest chance of getting it--so far as any one could see--but after all ... the great thing is to know!

Once more the Marchesa, entering with a cry and a sharply slammed door ... not even sending up her name before her ... not even waiting to learn if Melissa could see her ... ignoring any claim Melissa might have to privacy ... as if Melissa had been merely her creature.

Which Melissa wasn’t to be--any longer.

All this at eleven in the morning. Roderick, having breakfasted with his aunt and communicated his defeat. Little guessing what fuse he ignited. In the way of the beloved.

“Melissa--” said the Marchesa violently. “What is all this? I insist upon knowing. I could not believe my ears--when Roderick told me....”

Melissa asked the Marchesa to sit down. She sat down herself and looked at the Marchesa quietly.

“I asked him,” she said--“to tell you.”

“Of all the impudence!... Incredible...!” Unlovely rage roughened the Marchesa’s voice, distorted her delicate features. “Do you mean to say that after everything ... you have deliberately broken that poor boy’s heart--”

A vagrant recollection of Roderick eating eggs and bacon, toast and marmalade, with a large pot of coffee at his elbow, stemmed his aunt’s eloquence for the fraction of an instant ... “at least,” she amended thoughtfully, “he seems very much upset.”

“I’m sorry,” said Melissa.

The Marchesa looked her over with furious acuteness.

“It’s true, then--you’ve refused him?”

“Yes.”

“Not good enough for your ladyship?”

Melissa made no answer.

“You are the most amazing fool,” said the Marchesa viciously, “that I have ever known.”

Melissa didn’t answer that either. She rather thought so, herself.

“Very well,” continued her visitor, “if you think that in the remaining six weeks of your year you can accomplish anything at all ... if you think that I am going to advise you any further....”

“That,” said Melissa, interrupting her coolly, “is what I should like to speak to you about. I shall not be here any longer....”

Even the Marchesa, as the significance of that took her--sat momentarily open-mouthed.

“Where--may I ask....”

“I am leaving the apartment to-day,” said Melissa. She added--“The clothes which you--bought for me--I will leave in the closet. I am taking nothing but things that belong to me.”

“Indeed?... Blue serge and little black hat again? You’ll never do it, my dear!” A brief rattle of laughter.

Melissa looked down at herself curiously. “It is what I have on.”

The Marchesa stared--and stopped laughing. “So it is. Not quite the same, however. I’ve given you one thing you won’t be able to leave in that closet.... charm! You could wear a gunny-sack, now--and look well in it.”

Extraordinary old creature! She preened herself, at that, with a smirk and a chuckle and a flutter.

“I’ve done something to you, Melissa, which you can’t undo with a change of hats. I’ve altered your soul--that’s what I’ve done!”

“I didn’t know myself--that was all.”

“And now you do?”

“And now I do.”

“Who held the mirror? Are you going back to Kenealy?”

“I am not going back to any one,” said Melissa. “And you will forgive me if I decline to discuss myself any further. As I said--I am leaving to-day--which terminates our agreement. I wish to thank you....”

“Don’t be absurd!” said the Marchesa with vast annoyance. “You never liked me--and you know it. I must say, Melissa, I’m disappointed in you. You’ve had a most remarkable opportunity--and you’ve made nothing at all of it ... exactly nothing at all! Well--” she rose a trifle creakily ... “shall I tell them downstairs, that you’re leaving to-day?... You wouldn’t like--” this with a slight leer--“to think it over?”

“I have already told them.”

“Indeed! You’ll miss this place--whether you know it now--or not....”

Melissa’s eyes were dark and unsmiling. A tremor passed over her mouth. She looked about her and shut her hands hard in the folds of her frock.

“You’ve gotten soft ... you’re uncommonly dependent on your surroundings ... it will be harder than before ... going back to one room--with no view--and no gas-jet. You’ll have to go back to work you know, too. I hope you don’t expect me to finance you any further?”

Melissa’s face flamed. Without a word she turned toward the door.

“Just as well,” said the Marchesa, “that you are not marrying Roderick after all ... with that temper ... you’d make his life a burden!”

She stopped once more on the threshold, looked at Melissa strangely, laughed her thin raucous laughter and narrowed withered eyelids.

“It’s a man, of course!” she said. Her Credo and apologia.

The porter came up as the Marchesa went down.

He asked for Melissa’s bags and wanted an address to which to send them. Melissa gave him one--Nelly Rivers’ studio. She had called Nelly, early that morning and Nelly had said: “Well--I’m not altogether surprised, old thing! I thought you were too good for the Persian-pussy stuff. Stay with me to-night--or as long as you need. Look for a job, to-morrow.”

Melissa did not intend to wait for to-morrow. She was going to look for a job that afternoon ... with loneliness in her heart ... but with hands untied.

She thought, a faint smile twitching her lips, as she watched the porter trundle her belongings out of sight ... “Gold-diggers are born and not made.”

But deeper than that, she knew what had brought all her gold-digging to nothing.

Nelly’s song had said it.

“--The dream of an unborn kiss....”

Making other dreams dust.

Making other kisses futile.

The cruelest dream to follow ... but heaven, if ever, to find!