you read about me in the papers and books, about me being a
lady-killer, is all wrong. There’s not an iota of truth in it. I
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guess I’ve done more than my share of card-playing and
whiskey-drinking, but women I’ve let alone. There was a woman
that killed herself, but I didn’t know she wanted me that bad or
else I’d have married her–not for love, but to keep her from
killing herself. She was the best of the boiling, but I never
gave her any encouragement. I’m telling you all this because
you’ve read about it, and I want you to get it straight from me.
“Lady-killer! ” he snorted. “Why, Miss Mason, I don’t mind
telling you that I’ve sure been scairt of women all my life.
You’re the first one I’ve not been afraid of. That’s the strange
thing about it. I just plumb worship you, and yet I’m not afraid
of you. Mebbe it’s because you’re different from the women I
know. You’ve never chased me. Lady-killer! Why, I’ve been
running away from ladies ever since I can remember, and I
guess all that saved me was that I was strong in the wind and
that I never fell down and broke a leg or anything.
“I didn’t ever want to get married until after I met you, and
until a long time after I met you. I cottoned to you from the
start; but I never thought it would get as bad as marriage. Why,
I can’t get to sleep nights, thinking of you and wanting you.”
He came to a stop and waited. She had taken the lace and muslin
from the basket, possibly to settle her nerves and wits, and was
sewing upon it. As she was not looking at him, he devoured her
with his eyes. He noted the firm, efficient hands–hands that
could control a horse like Bob, that could run a typewriter
almost as fast as a man could talk, that could sew on dainty
garments, and that, doubtlessly, could play on the piano over
there in the corner. Another ultra-feminine detail he
noticed–her slippers. They were small and bronze. He had never
imagined she had such a small foot. Street shoes and riding
boots were all that he had ever seen on her feet, and they had
given no advertisement of this. The bronze slippers fascinated
him, and to them his eyes repeatedly turned.
A knock came at the door, which she answered. Daylight could not
help hearing the conversation. She was wanted at the telephone.
“Tell him to call up again in ten minutes,” he heard her say, and
the masculine pronoun caused in him a flashing twinge of
jealousy. Well, he decided, whoever it was, Burning Daylight
would give him a run for his money. The marvel to him was that a
girl like Dede hadn’t been married long since.
She came back, smiling to him, and resumed her sewing. His eyes
wandered from the efficient hands to the bronze slippers and back
again, and he swore to himself that there were mighty few
stenographers like her in existence. That was because she must
have come of pretty good stock, and had a pretty good raising.
Nothing else could explain these rooms of hers and the clothes
she wore and the way she wore them.
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“Those ten minutes are flying,” he suggested.
“I can’t marry you,” she said.
“You don’t love me?”
She shook her head.
“Do you like me–the littlest bit?”
This time she nodded, at the same time allowing the smile of
amusement to play on her lips. But it was amusement without
contempt. The humorous side of a situation rarely appealed in
vain to her.
“Well, that’s something to go on,” he announced. “You’ve got to
make a start to get started. I just liked you at first, and look
what it’s grown into. You recollect, you said you didn’t like my
way of life. Well, I’ve changed it a heap. I ain’t gambling
like I used to. I’ve gone into what you called the legitimate,
making two minutes grow where one grew before, three hundred
thousand folks where only a hundred thousand grew before. And
this time next year there’ll be two million eucalyptus growing on
the hills. Say do you like me more than the littlest bit?”
She raised her eyes from her work and looked at him as she
answered:
“I like you a great deal, but–”
He waited a moment for her to complete the sentence, failing
which, he went on himself.
“I haven’t an exaggerated opinion of myself, so I know I ain’t
bragging when I say I’ll make a pretty good husband. You’d find
I was no hand at nagging and fault-finding. I can guess what it
must be for a woman like you to be independent. Well, you’d be
independent as my wife. No strings on you. You could follow
your own sweet will, and nothing would be too good for you. I’d
give you everything your heart desired–”
“Except yourself,” she interrupted suddenly, almost sharply.
Daylight’s astonishment was momentary.
“I don’t know about that. I’d be straight and square, and live
true. I don’t hanker after divided affections.”
“I don’t mean that,” she said. “Instead of giving yourself to
your wife, you would give yourself to the three hundred thousand
people of Oakland, to your street railways and ferry-routes, to
the two million trees on the hills to everything
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business–and–and to all that that means.”
“I’d see that I didn’t,” he declared stoutly. “I’d be yours to
command.”
“You think so, but it would turn out differently.” She suddenly
became nervous. “We must stop this talk. It is too much like
attempting to drive a bargain. ‘How much will you give?’ ‘I’ll
give so much.’ ‘I want more,’ and all that. I like you, but not
enough to marry you, and I’ll never like you enough to marry
you.”
“How do you know that?” he demanded.
“Because I like you less and less.”
Daylight sat dumfounded. The hurt showed itself plainly in his
face.
“Oh, you don’t understand,” she cried wildly, beginning to lose
self-control–“It’s not that way I mean. I do like you; the more
I’ve known you the more I’ve liked you. And at the same time the
more I’ve known you the less would I care to marry you.”
This enigmatic utterance completed Daylight’s perplexity.
“Don’t you see?” she hurried on. “I could have far easier
married the Elam Harnish fresh from Klondike, when I first laid
eyes on him long ago, than marry you sitting before me now.”
He shook his head slowly. “That’s one too many for me. The more
you know and like a man the less you want to marry him.
Familiarity breeds contempt–I guess that’s what you mean.”
“No, no,” she cried, but before she could continue, a knock came
on the door.
“The ten minutes is up,” Daylight said.
His eyes, quick with observation like an Indian’s, darted about
the room while she was out. The impression of warmth and comfort
and beauty predominated, though he was unable to analyze it;
while the simplicity delighted him–expensive simplicity, he
decided, and most of it leftovers from the time her father went
broke and died. He had never before appreciated a plain hardwood
floor with a couple of wolfskins; it sure beat all the carpets in
creation. He stared solemnly at a bookcase containing acCouple
of hundred books. There was mystery. He could not understand
what people found so much to write about.
Writing things and reading things were not the same as doing
things, and himself primarily a man of action, doing things was
alone comprehensible.
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189
His gaze passed on from the Crouched Venus to a little tea-table
with all its fragile and exquisite accessories, and to a shining
copper kettle and copper chafing-dish. Chafing dishes were not
unknown to him, and he wondered if she concocted suppers on this
one for some of those University young men he had heard whispers
about. One or two water-colors on the wall made him conjecture
that she had painted them herself. There were photographs of
horses and of old masters, and the trailing purple of a Burial of
Christ held him for a time. But ever his gaze returned to that
Crouched Venus on the piano. To his homely, frontier-trained
mind, it seemed curious that a nice young woman should have such
a bold, if not sinful, object on display in her own room. But he
reconciled himself to it by an act of faith. Since it was Dede,
it must be eminently all right. Evidently such things went along
with culture. Larry Hegan had similar casts and photographs in
his book-cluttered quarters. But then, Larry Hegan was
different. There was that hint of unhealth about him that
Daylight invariably sensed in his presence, while Dede, on the
contrary, seemed always so robustly wholesome, radiating an