CHAPTER XXXVII

Forbes had been recruiting strength to tell her that he released her;

but she anticipated him by jilting him first--and in sporting terms. He

stared at her, but he could not see the tears raining down in her heart.

He heard her, but was deaf to the immense regret in the little words she

added:

"You're pretty poor, aren't you?"

His very forehead was drenched with red shame at such comment from her.

She could see how she had hurt his pride, and she put on the solemnity

he expected her to wear.

"Oh, don't misunderstand me, Harvey, I implore you! I love you all the

more for being just your glorious self. You've paid me the greatest

honor I ever had--or shall have. You asked me to be your wife, and you

are willing to divide up your pitiful little income with me. You'd give

it all to me. You'd run into debt till you smothered. But it wouldn't

work out. Mother was right: 'People can do without love easier than

without money.'"

"Not people with hearts like yours," he ventured at last to put in as a

feeble objection.

"Oh, I'm afraid of this heart of mine," she answered. "If it had any

sense it wouldn't have fallen in love with you--you of all men. I knew

you weren't really terribly rich, but I didn't think you were so

pitifully, cruelly poor."

The epithet reiterated stung him like a whip in the face. He protested

impatiently:

"I'm not really poor. Army officers have many ways of saving expenses. I

might not give you princely luxuries, Persis, but I'd make your life

happy."

His resistance gave her something to fight, and her resentment at fate

welcomed it.

"Me happy at an army post? With nothing but poker for you and gossip for

me? No, thank you!"

She caught a twitch of anger in his brows, and she grew harsher:

"Look here! Would you give up your career for me?"

"A woman can't ask a man to give up his career," he answered; and she

retorted with the spirit of her time:

"Then why should she give up hers for him?"

He looked an old-fashioned surprise. "And have you a career?"

"Of course I have. Every woman has; and nowadays a woman has got to look

out for herself and her future, or she'll get left at the post."

"And what career have you?" he asked, amazed.

"Marriage. It's the average woman's main business in life, Harvey. If

she fails in that she fails in everything."

"Then you think the poor have no right to marry?"

"Oh no, I'm not such a fool as that. There are people with simple tastes

who can be happy on nothing a year--sweet domestic women who love to

manage and cook and sweep and mend and sew. There are lots of unhappy

rich women who would be thoroughly contented if they were the wives of

laboring-men. But that doesn't happen to be my type. I can't help it. I

grow positively sick at the sight of a needle. Even fancy stitching

hurts my eyes. And I can't help that. There are lots of poor women who

are making their homes hells because they have no money. They'd be

angels if they didn't have to economize. Some people, rich and poor,

take a sensuous delight in watching a bank account grow, and they get

more thrill out of saving a penny than out of getting something more

beautiful for it.

"But I'm not one of those. I'm a squanderer by nature. I hate to be

denied things. I loathe counting the cost of things. I can't endure to

see some one else wearing better things than I've got on. I want to

throttle a woman who has a later hat than mine. Oh, I may be a bad one,

Harvey, but it isn't my fault. I am what I was born to be. I've got to

marry money, Harvey. I've just got to."

He cried out against her self-portrait as a libel. "Oh, Persis, don't

tell me that you are mercenary--a woman with a big heart like yours."

"I'm not mercenary exactly; I loathe money as money, but I like nice

things. I have to have them. I'm trying to be honest with myself and

with you--in time--before it's too late. It's hard; but I didn't arrange

the world, did I? I didn't choose my own soul, did I? But I've got to

get along with what was given me, haven't I? I tell you I'd ruin your

life, Harvey. You'd divorce me in a year."

"Don't talk like that, or you will ruin your own life! There's a big

tragedy in store for you, Persis, unless you--"

She was so tortured with disillusion and with the death of her first

romance that she grew very hard.

"Well, so long as it isn't the tragedy of being unable to pay my bills

and of eating my own cooking I can stand it. I'd rather be unhappy than

shabby. But it's growing late; we must get back."

He aided her to her feet, untied the horses, and offered her his hand

for a mounting-block. But she said:

"We can walk quicker here than we can ride." Taking her bridle in her

arm, she set out swiftly. She seemed once more to be running away from

something--a shadow of poverty, no doubt. He felt unspeakably sorry for

her. Again he was about to offer her back her heart when an abrupt light

broke over her face. She paused, laughed, turned to him.

"What a fool I am! My father set my sister up in business as a British

peeress and bought her her husband and settled a whacking dower on her.

He can do the same for me and keep the money in this country--and get

me a real husband. He could give me enough for us both to live on

comfortably."

"I reckon I could hardly accept that arrangement," Forbes said, as

gently as he might.

"You see!" she cried out. "You expect me to murder my pride and accept

poverty, but you won't accept wealth because you must keep your pride.

You couldn't object to my having the money to spend on myself, could

you?"

"No, I could hardly object to that," he said.

"Well, then, if everything goes right with my father's plans we'll have

love and money and all. It will be wonderful--heaven on earth! Kiss me!"

She put up her lips, and he kissed them and found them bitter-sweet.

Then she strode on with a lilting joy, humming a song and putting her

horse to his paces to keep up with her. Forbes remembered what Senator

Tait had said of her father's impending doom, and her rapture was a

heartbreak to him--a final irony.

As they issued from the green cave of the forest and walked down to the

State Road to take the saddle, a motor came along. Two men were in it.

The driver stopped the car in front of Persis, and the other man lifted

his hat. It disclosed a shock of brindle hair and half of one eyebrow

gone.

"Can you tell me if this road leads to Briarcliff?" he asked.

"Yes, I think so," Persis answered.

"Thank you, Miss Cabot," he called out, as the car whirred away.

Persis stared after him in amazement. "Now who was that? How did he know

my name?"

"By your pictures in the papers," Forbes suggested.

"No," said Persis; "I've met him somewhere. Oh, I know. He's a reporter

on the--some paper. Lord, I hope he didn't misconstrue our being here. I

didn't like the grin on his face."