"I shouldn’t advise you to do that—if I thought about myself."
"Then why say anything about it?"
"Because I thought I ought to put you wise."
"What’s the good of that, when I don’t like him?"
"Girls often marry men they don’t like when they have as much money as
he’ll have."
"Money’s an object, of course; but when a fellow—"
"He’s not so bad. I like him. Most men do."
"Most men wouldn’t have to stand his pawing them about. I like him,
too—except for the physical."
"Then you wouldn’t marry him?"
"Not unless it was the only way not to starve to death."
"But you’ll marry some one."
"Probably; and, probably—so will you."
Her voice was as cool and unflurried as if the words were tossed off
without intention.
Both knew that an electric change had come into the mental atmosphere.
Of the two, the girl was the less perturbed. Though beneath her feet the
floor seemed to heave like the deck of a ship in a storm, she could
stand in a jaunty attitude, her hands in her ruby-red pockets, and throw
up at its sauciest angle her daintily modeled chin.
With him it was different. He had two main points to consider. In the
first place, Bob Collingham had just made an announcement to which he,
Wray, was obliged to give some thought. He didn’t need to give much to
it, because the conclusions were so obvious. Jennie had hit the poor
fellow in the eye, and, instead of viewing the case in a common-sense,
Gallicized way, he was taking it with crazy American solemnity. There
was nothing to it. The Collinghams would never stand for it. It would be
a favor to them, as well as to Bob himself, to put the whole thing out
of the question.
"So that settles that," he said to himself.
Because as he continued to reflect he worked furiously, Jennie saw in
him the being whom the lingo of the hour had taught her to call a
caveman. In the motion-picture theaters she generally frequented,
cavemen struggled with vampires in duels of passion and strength. Jennie
longed to be loved by one of this race; and a caveman who came to her
with violet eyes and a sweeping brown mustache possessed an appeal
beyond the prehistoric. In spite of the challenge in her smile and the
daring angle at which she held her chin, she waited in violent emotion
for what he would say next.
"Oh, I sha’n’t marry for years to come," he jerked out, still going on
with his work. "Sha’n’t be able to afford it. If I didn’t have a few, a
very few, hundred dollars a year, I couldn’t pay you your miserable six
a week."
She took this manfully. The head, with its ruby-red toque, to which a
tobacco-colored wing gave the dash which was part of Jennie’s
personality, was perhaps poised a little more audaciously; but there was
no other sign outside the wildness of her heart.
"Oh, well; you’re only beginning your career as yet. One of these days
you’ll do a big portrait—"
"But, Jennie, marriage isn’t everything."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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