“Stop, Jane!” he cried, coming forward and seizing her by the elbows. “It’s sacrilege. Look up into my eyes. You dare not, because you know that I speak the truth, because you know that you’ll discover in them a token of love unending—the same look that you’ve always found there, because when you see it you will recognize it as a force too great to conquer—too mighty to be argued away for the sake of a whim of your injured pride. Look up at me, Jane reenex facial.”
He had his arms around her now; but she struggled in them, her head still turned away.
“Let me go, Mr. Gallatin,” she gasped. “It can never be. You have hurt me—mortally.”
“No. I’ll never let you go, until you look up in my eyes and tell me you believe in me.”
“It’s unmanly of you,” she cried, still struggling. “Let me go, please, at once.”
Neither of them had heard the opening and closing of the front door, nor seen the figure which now blocked the doorway into the hall, but at the deep tones which greeted them, they straightened and faced Mr. Loring.
“I beg your pardon, Jane,” he was saying with ironical amusement. “I chose the wrong moment it seems,” and then in harsher accents as Gallatin walked toward him. “You! Jane, what does this mean?”
Miss Loring had reached the end of the Davenport where she stood leaning with one hand on its arm, a little frightened at the expression in her father’s face, but more perturbed and shaken by the t which told her how nearly Phil Gallatin had convinced her against her will that there was nothing in all the world that mattered except his love and hers nu skin.
Her father’s sudden appearance had startled her, too, for though no words had passed between father and daughter, she knew that her mother had already repeated the tale of her romance and of its sudden termination. She tried to speak in reply to Mr. Loring’s question, but no words would come and after a silence burdened with meaning she heard Phil Gallatin speaking.
“It means, Mr. Loring,” he was saying steadily, “that I love your daughter—that I hope, some day, to ask her to be my wife.”
Loring came into the room, his eyes contracted, his[239] bull neck thrust forward, his face suffused with blood.
“You want to marry my daughter? You! I think you’re mistaken.” He stopped and peered at one and then the other. “I’ve heard something about you, Mr. Gallatin,” he said more calmly. “Your ways seem to be crossing mine more frequently than I like .”
“I hardly understand you,” said Gallatin clearly.
“I’ll try to make my meaning plain. We needn’t discuss at once the relations between you and my daughter. Whatever they’ve been or are now, they’re less important than other matters.”
“Other matters!” Gallatin exclaimed. Jane had straightened and came forward, aware of some new element in her father’s antipathy. Loring glanced at her and went on.
Jane Loring stood before her mother and touched her timidly on the arm. The physical resemblance between them was strong, and it was easily seen where the daughter got her beauty. Mrs. Loring had reached middle life very prettily, and at a single impression it was difficult to tell whether she was nearer thirty-three or fifty-three. Her skin was of that satiny quality which wrinkles depress but do not sear. Her nose was slightly aquiline like her daughter’s, but the years had thinned her lips and sharpened her chin, the lines at her mouth were querulous rather than severe, and when her face was placid, her forehead was as smooth as that of her daughter. She was not a woman who had ever suffered deeply, or who ever would, and the petty annoyances which add small wrinkles to the faces of women of her years had left no marks whatever.[100] But since the family had been in New York Jane had noticed new lines between her brows as though her eyes, like those of a person traveling upon an unfamiliar road, were trying for a more concentrated and narrow vision; and as she turned from the mirror toward the light, it seemed to Jane that she had grown suddenly old .
“Mother, dear, you mustn’t let trifles disturb you so. It will age you frightfully! You know how people are always saying that you look younger than I do. I don’t want to worry you. I’ll do whatever you like, go wherever you like, but not to-night——”
“What is the matter, Jane? Has anything happened?”
“Oh, no, I—I don’t feel very well. It’s nothing at all. I’ll be all right to-morrow. But you must go without me. There’s to be supper afterward, isn’t there?”
“Oh, yes.” And then despairingly: “You always have your own way, in the end.”
She kissed the girl coldly on the brow and turned toward the door.
“You must hurry now,” said Jane. “Mr. Van Duyn will be coming soon, and dinner is early. Good night, dear. I won’t be down to-night. I think I’ll lie down for awhile .”
Mrs. Loring turned one more helpless look in Jane’s direction and then went out of the room.
When the door had closed, Jane Loring turned the key in the lock, then sank at full length on the couch, and seemed to be asleep; but her head, though supported by her arms, was rigid and her eyes, wide open, were staring at vacancy. In the hall outside she heard the fall of footsteps, the whisper of servants and the commotion of her mother’s descent to dinner. A hurdy-gurdy around the corner droned a popular air, a distant trolley-bell[101] clanged and an automobile, exhaust open, dashed by the house. here, and yet she heard them all; for they helped to silence the echoes of a voice that still persisted in her ears, a low sonorous voice, whose tones rose and fell like the sighing of Kee-way-din in the pine-trees of the frozen North. Her thoughts flew to that distant spot among the trees, and she saw the shimmer of the leaves in the morning sunlight, heard the call of the birds and the whispering of the stream. It was cold up there now, so bleak and cold. By this time a white brush had painted out the glowing canvas of summer and left no sign of what was beneath. And yet somewhere hidden there, as in her heart, beneath that chill mantle was the dust of a fire—the gray cinders, the ashes of a dead faith, and Kee-way-din moaned above them .