_ CHAPTER XV
She drew a deep, sweet breath as she entered the leafy shade and looked up into the bluest of cloudless skies. Odors of syringa and lilac freshened her, cleansing her of the last lingering taint of joss-sticks. The cardinal birds were very busy in the scarlet masses of Japanese quince; orioles fluttered among golden Forsythia; here and there an exotic starling preened and peered at the burnished purple grackle, stalking solemnly through the tender grass.
For an hour she walked vigorously, enchanted with the sun and sky and living green, through arbors heavy with wistaria, iris hued and scented, through rambles under tall elms tufted with new leaves, past fountains splashing over, past lakes where water-fowl floated or stretched brilliant wings in the late afternoon sunlight. At times the summer wind blew her hair, and she lifted her lips to it, caressing it with every fiber of her; at times she walked pensively, wondering why she had been forbidden the Park unless accompanied.
"More danger, I suppose," she thought impatiently.... "Well, what is this danger that seems to travel like one's shadow, dogging a girl through the world? It seems to me that if all the pleasant things of life are so full of danger I'd better find out what it is.... I might as well look for it so that I'll recognize it when I encounter it.... And learn to keep away."
She scanned the flowery thickets attentively, looked behind her, then walked on.
"If it's robbers they mean," she reflected, "I'm a good wrestler, and I can make any one of my four brothers-in-law look foolish.... Besides, the Park is full of fat policemen.... And if they mean I'm likely to get lost, or run over, or arrested, or poisoned with soda-water and bonbons--" She laughed to herself, swinging on in her free-limbed, wholesome beauty, scarcely noticing a man ahead, occupying a bench half hidden under the maple's foliage.
"So I'll just look about for this danger they are all afraid of, and when I see it, I'll know what to do," she concluded, paying not the slightest heed to the man on the bench until he rose, as she passed him, and took off his hat.
"You!" she exclaimed.
She had stopped short, confronting him with the fearless and charming directness natural to her. "What an amusing accident," she said frankly.
"The truth is," he began, "it is not exactly an accident."
"Isn't it?"
"N--no.... Are you offended?"
"Offended? No. Should I be? Why?... Besides, I suppose when we have finished this conversation you are going the _other_ way."
"I--no, I wasn't."
"Oh! Then you are going to sit here?"
"Y--yes--I suppose so.... But I don't want to."
"Then why do you?"
"Well, if I'm not going the _other_ way, and if I'm not going to remain here--" He looked at her, half laughing. She laughed, too, not exactly knowing why.
"Don't you really mind my walking a little way with you?" he asked.
"No, I don't. Why should I? Is there any reason? Am I not old enough to know why we should not walk together? Is it because the sun is going down? Is there what people call 'danger'?"
He was so plainly taken aback that her fair young face became seriously curious.
"_Is_ there any reason why you should not walk with me?" she persisted.
The clear, direct gaze challenged him. He hesitated.
"Yes, there is," he said.
"A--a reason why you should not walk with me?"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
And, as he did not find words to answer, she studied him for a moment, glanced up and down the woodland walk, then impulsively seated herself and motioned him to a place beside her on the bench.
"Now," she said, "I'm in a position to find out just what this danger is that they all warn me about. _You_ know, don't you?"
"Know what?" he answered.
"About the danger that I seem to run every time I manage to enjoy myself.... And you _do_ know; I see it by the way you look at me--and your expression is just like their expression when they tell me not to do things I find most natural."
"But--I--you----"
"You _must_ tell me! I shall be thoroughly vexed with you if you don't."
Then he began to laugh, and she let him, leaning back to watch him with uncertain and speculative blue eyes. After a moment he said:
"You are absolutely unlike any girl I ever heard of. I am trying to get used to it--to adjust things. Will you help me?"
"How?" she asked innocently.
"Well, by telling me"--he looked at her a moment--"your age. You look about nineteen."
"I am sixteen and a half. I and all my sisters have developed our bodies so perfectly because, until we came to New York last autumn, we had lived all our lives out-of-doors." She looked at him with a friendly smile. "Would you really like to know about us?"
"Intensely."
"Well, there are eight of us: Chlorippe, thirteen; Philodice, fourteen; Dione, fifteen; Aphrodite, sixteen--I am Aphrodite; Cybele, seventeen, married; Lissa, eighteen, married; Iole, nineteen, married, and Vanessa, twenty, married." She raised one small, gloved finger to emphasize the narrative. "All our lives we were brought up to be perfectly natural, to live, act, eat, sleep, play like primitive people. Our father dressed us like youths--boys, you know. Why," she said earnestly, "until we came to New York we had no idea that girls wore such lovely, fluffy underwear--but I believe I am not to mention such things; at least they have told me not to--but my straight front is still a novelty to me, and so are my stockings, so you won't mind if I've said something I shouldn't, will you?"
"No," he said; his face was expressionless.
"Then _that's_ all right. So you see how it is; we don't quite know what we may do in this city. At first we were delighted to see so many attractive men, and we wanted to speak to some of them who seemed to want to speak to us, but my father put a stop to that--but it's absurd to think all those men might be robbers, isn't it?"
"Very." There was not an atom of intelligence left in his face.
"So _that's_ all right, then. Let me see, what was I saying? Oh, yes, I know! So four of my sisters were married, and we four remaining are being civilized.... But, oh--I wish I could be in the country for a little while! I'm so homesick for the meadows and brooks and my pajamas and my bare feet in sandals again.... And people seem to know so little in New York, and nobody understands us when we make little jests in Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, and nobody seems to have been very well educated and accomplished, so we feel strange at times."
"D--d--do you _do_ all those things?"
"What things?"
"M--make jests in Arabic?"
"Why, yes. Don't you?"
"No. What else do you do?"
"Why, not many things."
"Music?"
"Oh, of course."
"Piano?"
"Yes, piano, violin, harp, guitar, zither--all that sort of thing.... Don't you?"
"No. What else?"
"Why--just various things, ride, swim, fence, box--I box pretty well--all those things----"
"Science, too?"
"Rudiments. Of course I couldn't, for example, discourse with authority upon the heteropterous mictidae or tell you in what genus or genera the prothorax and femora are digitate; or whether climatic and polymorphic forms of certain diurnal lepidoptera occur within certain boreal limits. I have only a vague and superficial knowledge of any science, you see."
"I see," he said gravely.
She leaned forward thoughtfully, her pretty hands loosely interlaced upon her knee.
"Now," she said, "tell me about this danger that such a girl as I must guard against."
"There is no danger," he said slowly.
"But they told me----"
"Let them tell you what it is, then."
"No; you tell me?"
"I can't."
"Why?"
"Because--I simply can't."
"Are you ashamed to?"
"Perhaps--" He lifted his boxed sketching-kit by the strap, swung it, then set it carefully upon the ground: "Perhaps it is because I am ashamed to admit that there could be any danger to any woman in this world of men."
She looked at him so seriously that he straightened up and began to laugh. But she did not forget anything he had said, and she began her questions at once:
"Why should you not walk with me?"
"I'll take that back," he said, still laughing; "there is every reason why I should walk with you."
"Oh!... But you said----"
"All I meant was not for you, but for the ordinary sort of girl. Now, the ordinary, every-day, garden girl does not concern you----"
"Yes, she does! Why am I not like her?"
"Don't attempt to be----"
"_Am_ I different--very different?"
"Superbly different!" The flush came to his face with the impulsive words.
She considered him in silence, then: "Should I have been offended because you came into the Park to find me? And why did you? Do you find me interesting?"
"So interesting," he said, "that I don't know what I shall do when you go away."
Another pause; she was deeply absorbed with her own thoughts. He watched her, the color still in his face, and in his eyes a growing fascination.
"I'm not out," she said, resting her chin on one gloved hand, "so we're not likely to meet at any of those jolly things you go to. What do you think we'd better do?--because they've all warned me against doing just what you and I have done."
"Speaking without knowing each other?" he asked guiltily.
"Yes.... But I did it first to you. Still, when I tell them about it, they won't let you come to visit me. I tried it once. I was in a car, and such an attractive man looked at me as though he wanted to speak, and so when I got out of the car he got out, and I thought he seemed rather timid, so I asked him where Tiffany's was. I really didn't know, either. So we had such a jolly walk together up Fifth Avenue, and when I said good-by he was so anxious to see me again, and I told him where I lived. But--do you know?--when I explained about it at home they acted so strangely, and they never would tell me whether or not he ever came."
"Then you intend to tell them all about--_us_?"
"Of course. I've disobeyed them."
"And--and I am never to see you again?"
"Oh, I'm very disobedient," she said innocently. "If I wanted to see you I'd do it."
"But _do_ you?"
"I--I am not sure. Do you want to see me?"
His answer was stammered and almost incoherent. That, and the color in his face and the _something_ in his eyes, interested her.
"Do you really find me so attractive?" she asked, looking him directly in the eyes. "You must answer me quickly; see how dark it is growing! I must go. Tell me, do you like me?"
"I never cared so much for--for any woman----."
She dimpled with delight and lay back regarding him under level, unembarrassed brows.
"That is very pleasant," she said. "I've often wished that a man--of your kind--would say that to me. I do wish we could be together a great deal, because you like me so much already and I truly do find you agreeable.... Say it to me again--about how much you like me."
"I--I--there is no woman--none I ever saw so--so interesting.... I mean more than that."
"Say it then."
"Say what I mean?"
"Yes."
"I am afraid----"
"Afraid? Of what?"
"Of offending you----"
"Is it an offense to me to tell me how much you like me? _How_ can it offend me?"
"But--it is incredible! You won't believe----"
"Believe what?"
"That in so short a time I--I could care for you so much----"
"But I shall believe you. I know how I feel toward you. And every time you speak to me I feel more so."
"Feel more so?" he stammered.
"Yes, I experience more delight in what you say. Do you think I am insensible to the way you look at me?"
"You--you mean--" He simply could not find words.
She leaned back, watching him with sweet composure; then laughed a little and said: "Do you suppose that you and I are going to fall in love with one another?"
In the purpling dusk the perfume of wistaria grew sweeter and sweeter.
"I've done it already--" His voice shook and failed; a thrush, invisible in shadowy depths, made soft, low sounds.
"You _love_ me--already?" she exclaimed under her breath.
"Love you! I--I--there are no words--" The thrush stirred the sprayed foliage and called once, then again, restless for the moon.
Her eyes wandered over him thoughtfully: "So _that_ is love.... I didn't know.... I supposed it could be nothing pleasanter than friendship, although they say it is.... But how could it be? There is nothing pleasanter than friendship.... I am perfectly delighted that you love me. Shall we marry some day, do you think?"
He strove to speak, but her frankness stunned him.
"I meant to tell you that I am engaged," she observed. "Does that matter?"
"Engaged!" He found his tongue quickly enough then; and she, surprised, interested, and in nowise dissenting, listened to his eloquent views upon the matter of Mr. Frawley, whom she, during the lucid intervals of his silence, curtly described.
"Do you know," she said with great relief, "that I always felt that way about love, because I never knew anything about it except from the symptoms of Mr. Frawley? So when they told me that love and friendship were different, I supposed it must be so, and I had no high opinion of love ... until you made it so agreeable. Now I--I prefer it to anything else.... I could sit here with you all day, listening to you. Tell me some more." _