第38章

I shut myself up--that's the only thing to do--and have it out with myself I didn't know but the organ-music would calm me down, but it hasn't.I shan't sleep a wink tonight, but just rage around from one room to another, piling all the cushions from the divans on to the floor, and then kicking them away again.Do YOU ever have fits like that?"Theron was able to reply with a good conscience in the negative.It occurred to him to add, with jocose intent:

"I am curious to know, do these fits, as you call them, occupy a prominent part in Grecian philosophy as a general rule?"Celia gave a little snort, which might have signified amusement, but did not speak until they were upon her own sidewalk."There is my brother, waiting at the gate,"she said then, briefly.

"Well, then, I will bid you good-night here, I think,"Theron remarked, coming to a halt, and offering his hand.

"It must be getting very late, and my--that is--I have to be up particularly early tomorrow.So good-night;I hope you will be feeling ever so much better in spirits in the morning.""Oh, that doesn't matter," replied the girl, listlessly.

"It's a very paltry little affair, this life of ours, at the best of it.Luckily it's soon done with--like a bad dream."

"Tut! Tut! I won't have you talk like that!"interrupted Theron, with a swift and smart assumption of authority."Such talk isn't sensible, and it isn't good.

I have no patience with it!"

"Well, try and have a little patience with ME, anyway, just for tonight," said Celia, taking the reproof with gentlest humility, rather to her censor's surprise.

"I really am unhappy tonight, Mr.Ware, very unhappy.

It seems as if all at once the world had swelled out in size a thousandfold, and that poor me had dwindled down to the merest wee little red-headed atom--the most helpless and forlorn and lonesome of atoms at that." She seemed to force a sorrowful smile on her face as she added:

"But all the same it has done me good to be with you--I am sure it has--and I daresay that by tomorrow I shall be quite out of the blues.Good-night, Mr.Ware.

Forgive my making such an exhibition of myself I WASgoing to be such a fine early Greek, you know, and I have turned out only a late Milesian--quite of the decadence.

I shall do better next time.And good-night again, and ever so many thanks."She was walking briskly away toward the gate now, where the shadowy Michael still patiently stood.

Theron strode off in the opposite direction, taking long, deliberate steps, and bowing his head in thought.

He had his hands behind his back, as was his wont, and the sense of their recent contact with her firm, ungloved hands was, curiously enough, the thing which pushed itself uppermost in his mind.There had been a frank, almost manly vigor in her grasp; he said to himself that of course that came from her playing so much on the keyboard; the exercise naturally would give her large, robust hands.

Suddenly he remembered about the piano; he had quite forgotten to solicit her aid in selecting it.He turned, upon the impulse, to go back.She had not entered the gate as yet, but stood, shiningly visible under the street lamp, on the sidewalk, and she was looking in his direction.

He turned again like a shot, and started homeward.

The front door of the parsonage was unlocked, and he made his way on tiptoe through the unlighted hall to the living-room.The stuffy air here was almost suffocating with the evil smell of a kerosene lamp turned down too low.

Alice sat asleep in her old farmhouse rocking-chair, with an inelegant darning-basket on the table by her side.

The whole effect of the room was as bare and squalid to Theron's newly informed eye as the atmosphere was offensive to his nostrils.He coughed sharply, and his wife sat up and looked at the clock.It was after eleven.

"Where on earth have you been?" she asked, with a yawn, turning up the wick of her sewing-lamp again.

"You ought never to turn down a light like that,"said Theron, with a complaining note in his voice.

"It smells up the whole place.I never dreamed of your sitting up for me like this.You ought to have gone to bed.""But how could I guess that you were going to be so late?,"she retorted."And you haven't told me where you were.