“Give me till Saturday, Jacob. I promise you I'll try to think it all out. I'll go through with the pictures anyway--somehow. As for this photograph, go ahead. Use it. Only please don't commit yourself in a money way before I see you. Come to tea Saturday, at four. I'll either tell you finally that we are---well, hardly to be friends beyond the rest of this job of ours, or I'll--I'll go along with you, Jacob.” Her voice faltered over the last of this, but her eyes did not. And her chin was high. “It's too bad,” said he. “But you're right. It isn't me. You've come to the point where you've got to find yourself.” “That's it,” she said. “I've got to try to find out what I am. If my thoughts and feelings have been misleading me--well, maybe I _am_ conventional--maybe I _am_ little--” Her voice broke. Her eyes filled. But she fought the tears back and still faced him. He took a step toward her. She shook her head. He went out then. And when the outer door shut she dropped limply on the couch-bed. CHAPTER XVI--THE WORM PROPOSES MARRIAGE IN GENERAL |TWO days later, on Thursday, the Worm crossed the Square and Sixth Avenue and entered Greenwich Village proper. He was dressed, at the top, in a soft gray hat from England. Next beneath was a collar that had cost him forty cents. The four-in-hand scarf was an imported foulard, of a flowering pattern in blues and greens; with a jade pin stuck in it. The new, perfectly fitting suit was of Donegal homespun and would cost, when the bill was paid, slightly more than sixty dollars. The shoes, if not custom made, were new. And he carried a slender stick with a curving silver head. He felt uncomfortably conspicuous. His nerves tingled with an emotional disturbance that ignored his attempts to dismiss it as something beneath him. For the first time in nearly a decade he was about to propose marriage to a young woman. As he neared the street on which the young woman lived, his steps slackened and his mouth became uncomfortably dry.... All this was absurd, of course. He and Sue were good friends. “There needn't be all this excitement,” he told himself with a desperate clutching at the remnants of his sense of humor, “over suggesting to her that we change from a rational to an irrational relationship.” At the corner, however, he stopped dead. Then with a self-consciousness worthy of Peter himself, he covered his confusion by buying an afternoon paper and walking slowly back toward Sixth Avenue. Suddenly, savagely, he crumpled the paper into a ball, threw it into the street, strode resolutely to Sue's apartment-house and rang her bell. Sue promptly lighted the alcohol lamp under her kettle and they had tea. Over the cups, feeling coldly desperate, the Worm said: “Been thinking you all over, Sue.” It was a relief to find that his voice sounded fairly natural. She took the remark rather lightly. “I'm not worth it, Henry.... I've thought some myself--your idea of the boundary...”