Jill had started. It was disquieting to have her thoughts read with such accuracy.
“Nothing,” she said.
“It wouldn’t be any good,” Wally went on “because it wouldn’t be me. I couldn’t keep that attitude up, and I know I should hate myself for ever having tried it. There’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t do to help you, though I know it’s no use offering to do anything. You’re a fighter, and you mean to fight your own battle. It might happen that, if I kept after you and badgered you and nagged you, one of these days, when you were feeling particularly all alone in the world and tired of fighting for yourself, you might consent to marry me. But it wouldn’t do. Even if you reconciled yourself to it, it wouldn’t do. I suppose, the cave-woman sometimes felt rather relieved when everything was settled for her with a club, but I’m sure the caveman must have had a hard time ridding himself of the thought that he had behaved like a cad and taken a mean advantage. I don’t want to feel like that. I couldn’t make you happy if I felt like that. Much better to have you go on regarding me as a friend — knowing that, if ever your feelings do change, that I am right there, waiting.”
“But by that time your feelings will have changed.”
Wally laughed.
“Never!”
“You’ll meet some other girl —”
“I’ve met every girl in the world! None of them will do!” The lightness came back into Wally’s voice. “I’m sorry for the poor things, but they won’t do! Take ’em away! There’s only one girl in the world for me—oh, confound it! why is it that one always thinks in song-titles! Well, there it is. I’m not going to bother you. We’re pals. And, as a pal, may I offer you my bank-roll?”
“No!” said Jill. She smiled up at him. “I believe you would give me your coat if I asked you for it!”
Wally stopped.
“Do you want it? Here you are!”
“Wally, behave! There’s a policeman looking at you!”
“Oh, well, if you won’t! It’s a good coat, all the same.”
They turned the corner, and stopped before a brown-stone house, with a long ladder of untidy steps running up to the front door,
“Is this where you live?” Wally asked. He looked at the gloomy place disapprovingly. “You do choose the most awful places!”
“I don’t choose them. They’re thrust on me. Yes, this is where I live. If you want to know the exact room, it’s the third window up there over the front door. Well, good night.”
“Good night,” said Wally. He paused. “Jill.”
“Yes?”
“I know it’s not worth mentioning, and it’s breaking our agreement to mention it, but you do understand, don’t you?”
“Yes, Wally dear, I understand.”
“I’m round the corner, you know, waiting! And, if you ever do change, all you’ve got to do is just to come to me and say ‘It’s all right!’ —”
Jill laughed a little shakily.
“That doesn’t sound very romantic!”
“Not sound romantic! If you can think of any three words in the language that sound more romantic, let me have them! Well, never mind how they sound, just say them, and watch the result! But you must get to bed. Good night.”
“Good night, Wally.”
She passed in through the dingy door. It closed behind her, and Wally stood for some moments staring at it with a gloomy repulsion. He thought he had never seen a dingier door.
Then he started to walk back to his apartment. He walked very quickly, with clenched hands. He was wondering if after all there was not something to be said for the methods of the caveman when he went a-wooing. Twinges of conscience the caveman may have had when all was over, but at least he had established his right to look after the woman he loved.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
1.
“They tell me — I am told — I am informed — No, one moment, Miss Frisby.”
Mrs Peagrim wrinkled her fair forehead. It has been truly said that there is no agony like the agony of literary composition, and Mrs. Peagrim was having rather a bad time getting the requisite snap and ginger into her latest communication to the press. She bit her lip, and would have passed her twitching fingers restlessly through her hair but for the thought of the damage which such an action must do to her coiffure. Miss Frisby, her secretary, an anaemic and negative young woman, waited patiently, pad on knee, and tapped her teeth with her pencil.