Part 84

"At grand opera."

"How'll you get the money?"

"Of Stanley, if necessary. That's why I asked his address. I shan't ask for much. He'll not refuse."

"A few minutes ago you were talking of self-respect."

"As something I hoped to get. It comes with independence. I'll pay any price to get it."

"Any price?" said he, and never before had she seen his self-control in danger.

"I shan't ask Stanley until my other plans have failed."

"What other plans?"

"I am going to ask Mrs. Belloc for the money. She could afford to give--to lend--the little I'd want. I'm going to ask her in such a way that it will be as hard as possible for her to refuse. That isn't ladylike, but--I've dropped out of the lady class."

"And if she refuses?"

"Then I'll go one after another to several very rich men I know, and ask them as a business proposition."

"Go in person," advised he with an undisguised sneer.

"I'll raise no false hopes in them," she said. "If they choose to delude themselves, I'll not go out of my way to undeceive them--until I have to."

"So THIS is Mildred Gower?"

"You made that remark before."

"Really?"

"When Stanley showed you a certain photograph of me."

"I remember. This is the same woman."

"It's me," laughed she. "The real me. You'd not care to be married to her?"

"No," said he. Then, after a brief silence: "Yet, curiously, it was that woman with whom I fell in love. No, not exactly in love, for I've been thinking about what you said as to the difference between love in posse and love in esse, to put it scientifically--between love as a prospect and love as a reality."

"And I was right," said she. "It explains why marriages go to pieces and affairs come to grief. Those lovers mistook love's promise to come for fulfillment. Love doesn't die. It simply fails to come--doesn't redeem its promise."

"That's the way it might be with us," said he. "That's the way it would be with us," rejoined she.

He did not answer. When they spoke again it was of indifferent matters. An hour and a half after they started, they were at Mrs. Belloc's again. She asked him to have tea in the restaurant next door. He declined. He went up the steps with her, said:

"Well, I wish you luck. Moldini is the best teacher in America."

"How did you know Moldini was to teach me?" exclaimed she.

He smiled, put out his hand in farewell. "Crossley told me. Good-by."

"He told Crossley! I wonder why." She was so interested in this new phase that she did not see his outstretched hand, or the look of bitter irony that came into his eyes at this proof of the subordinate place love and he had in her thoughts.

"I'm nervous and anxious," she said apologetically. "Moldini told me he had some scheme about getting the money. If he only could! But no such luck for me," she added sadly.