The Danger Mark

He said: "I'll tell you. For one thing, you're playing fast and loose with Dysart. He's a safe enough proposition—but what is that sort of thing going to arouse in you?"

"What do you mean?" Her voice cleared with an immense relief. He noted it.

"It's making you tolerant," he said quietly, "familiar with subtleties, contemptuous of standards. It's rubbing the bloom off you. You let a man who is married come too close to you—you betray enough curiosity concerning him to do it. A drifting woman does that sort of thing, but why do you cut your cables? Good Lord, Geraldine, it's a fool business—permitting a man an intimacy–"

"More harmless than his wife permits you!" she retorted.

"That is not true."

"You are supposed to lie about such things, aren't you?" she said, reddening to the temples. "Oh, I am learning your rotten code, you see—the code of all these amiable people about me. You've done your part to instruct me that promiscuous caresses are men's distraction from ennui; Rosalie evidently is in sympathy with that form of amusement—many men and women among whom I live in town seem to be quite as casual as you are.... I did have standards once, scarcely knowing what they meant; I clung to them out of instinct. And when I went out into the world I found nobody paying any attention to them."

"You are wrong."

"No, I'm not. I go among people and see every standard I set up, ignored. I go to the theatre and see plays that embody everything I supposed was unthinkable, let alone unutterable. But the actors utter everything, and the audience thinks everything—and sometimes laughs. I can't do that—yet. But I'm progressing."

"Geraldine–"

"Wait!… My friends have taught me a great deal during this last year—by word, precept, and example. Things I held in horror nobody notices enough to condone. Take treachery, for example. The marital variety is all around me. Who cares, or is even curious after an hour's gossip has made it stale news? A divorce here, a divorce there—some slight curiosity to see who the victims may marry next time—that curiosity satisfied—and so is everybody. And they go back to their business of money-getting and money-spending—and that's what my friends have taught me. Can you wonder that my familiarity with it all breeds contempt enough to seek almost any amusement in sheer desperation—as you do?"

"I have only one amusement," he said.

"What?"

"Painting."

"And your model," she nodded with a short laugh. "Don't forget her. Your pretences are becoming tiresome, Duane. Your pretty model, Mrs. Dysart, poses less than you do."

Another wave of heart-sickness and anger swept over her; she felt the tears burning close to her lids and turned sharply on him:

"It's all rotten, I tell you—the whole personnel and routine—these people, and their petty vices and their idleness and their money! I—I do want to keep myself above it—clean of it—but what am I to do? One can't live without friends. If I don't gamble I'm left alone; if I don't flirt I'm isolated. If one stands aloof from everything one's friends go elsewhere. What can I do?"

"Make decent friends. I'm going to."

He bent forward and struck his knee with his closed fist.

"I'm going to," he repeated. "I've waited as long as I can for you to stand by me. I could have even remained among these harmless simians if you had cared for me. You're all the friend I need. But you've become one of them. It isn't in you to take an intelligent interest in me, or in what I care for. I've stood this sort of existence long enough. Now I'm all through with it."

She stared. Anger, astonishment, exasperation moved her in turn. Bitterness unlocked her lips.

"Are you expecting to take Mrs. Dysart with you to your intellectual solitude?"

"I would if I—if we cared for each other," he said, calmly seating himself.

She said, revolted: "Can't you even admit that you are in love with her? Must I confess that I could not avoid seeing you with her in her own room—half an hour since? Will that wring the truth out of you?"

"Oh, is that what you mean?" he said wearily. "I believe the door was open.... Well, Geraldine, whatever you saw won't harm anybody. So come to your own conclusions.... But I wish you were out of all this—with your fine insight and your clear intelligence, and your sweetness—oh, the chances for happiness you and I might have had!"

"A slim chance with you!" she said.

"Every chance; perhaps the only chance we'll ever have. And we've missed it."

"We've missed nothing"—a sudden and curious tremor set her heart and pulses beating heavily—"I tell you, Duane, it doesn't matter whom people of our sort marry because we'll always sicken of our bargain. What chance for happiness would I run with such a man as you? Or you with a girl like me?"

She lay back among the cushions, with a tired little laugh. "We are like the others of our rotten sort, only less aged, less experienced. But we have, each of us, our own heritage, our own secret depravity." She hesitated, reddening, caught his eye, stammered her sentence to a finish and flinched, crimsoning to the roots of her hair.

He stood up, paced the room for a few moments, came and stood beside her.

"Once," he said very low, "you admitted that you dare go anywhere with me. Do you remember?"

"Yes."

"Those are your rooms, I believe," pointing to a closed door far down the south corridor.

"Yes."

"Take me there now."

"I—cannot do that–"

"Yes, you can. You must."

"Now?—Duane."

"Yes, now—now! I tell you our time is now if it ever is to be at all. Don't waste words."

"What do you want to say to me that cannot be said here?" she asked in consternation.

He made no answer, but she found herself on her feet and moving slowly along beside him, his hand just touching her arm as guide.

"What is it, Duane?" she asked fearfully, as she laid her hand on the knob and turned to look at his altered face.

He made no answer. She hesitated, shivered, opened the door, hesitated again, slowly crossed the threshold, turned and admitted him.

The western sun flooded the silent chamber of rose and gray; a breeze moved the curtains, noiselessly; the scent of flowers freshened the silence.

There was a divan piled with silken cushions; he placed several for her; she stood irresolute for a moment, then, with a swift, unquiet side glance at him, seated herself.

"What is it?" she asked, looking up, her face beginning to reflect the grave concern in his.

"I want you to marry me, Geraldine."

"Is—is that what–"

"Partly. I want you to love me, too. But I'll attend to that if you'll marry me—I'll guarantee that. I—I will guarantee—more than that."

She was still looking up, searching his sombre face. She saw the muscles tighten along the jaw; saw the grave lines deepening. A sort of bewildered fear possessed her.

"I—am not in love with you, Duane." She added hastily, "I don't trust you either. How could I–"