Cornelia had never thought about it before; she did not try to pretend that she had; it seemed a little fantastic to her, but it flattered her to have him talk to her about it, and she liked his seriousness. He did not keep up the kind of banter with her that he did with Charmian; he did not pay her compliments, and she hated compliments from men.
Ludlow went off to speak to Mrs. Westley of something he saw her looking at; Charmian edged nearer to Cornelia. "I would give the world to be in your place. I never saw anything like it. Keep on looking just as you are! It's magnificent. Such color, and that queenly pose of the head! It would kill those Synthesis girls if they knew how he had been talking to you. My, if I could get anybody to be serious with me! Talk! Say something! Do you think its going to rain before we get home? His eyes keep turning this way, all the time; you can't see them, but they do. I am glad I brought my umbrella. Have you got your waterproof? I'm going to make you tell me every word he said when he came to see you yesterday; it'll be mean if you don't. No, I think I shall go up by the elevated, and then take the surface-car across. It's the most romantic thing I ever heard of. No, I don't believe it will be dark. Speak! Say something! You mustn't let me do all the talking; he'll notice."
Cornelia began to laugh, and Charmian turned away and joined Mrs. Westley and Ludlow, who were tilting outward some of the canvasses faced against the wall, and talking them over. Cornelia followed her, and they all four loitered over the paintings, luxuriously giving a glance at each, and saying a word or two about it. "Yes," Ludlow said, "sometimes I used to do three or four of them a day. I work more slowly now; if you want to get any thinking in, you've got to take time to it."
It was growing dark; Ludlow proposed to see them all home one after another. Mrs. Westley said no, indeed; the Broadway car, at the end of the second block, would leave her within three minutes of her door.
"And nothing could happen in three minutes," said Ludlow. "That stands to reason."
"And my one luxury is going home alone," said Charmian. "Mamma doesn't allow it, except to and from the Synthesis. Then I'm an art student and perfectly safe. If I were a young lady my life wouldn't be worth anything."
"Yes," Ludlow assented, "the great thing is to have some sort of business to be where you are."
"I know a girl who's in some of the charities, and she goes about at all hours of the night, and nobody speaks to her," said Charmian.
"Well, then," said Ludlow, "I don't see that there's anything for me to do, unless we all go together with Mrs. Wesley to get her Broadway car, and then keep on to the Elevated with you, Miss Maybough. Miss Saunders may be frightened enough then to let me walk to her door with her. A man likes to be of some little use in the world."
They had some mild fun about the weakness of Cornelia in needing an escort. She found it best to own that she did not quite know her way home, and was afraid to ask if she got puzzled.
Ludlow put out his spirit-lamp, which had been burning blue all the time, and embittering the tea in the kettle over it, and then they carried out their plan. Cornelia went before with Mrs. Westley, who asked her to come to her on her day, whenever she could leave her work for such a reckless dissipation. At the foot of the Elevated station stairs, where Charmian inflexibly required that they should part with her, in the interest of the personal liberty which she prized above personal safety, she embraced Cornelia formally, and then added an embrace of a more specific character, and whispered to her ear, "You're glorious!" and fled up the station stairs.
Cornelia understood that she was glorious because Mr. Ludlow was walking home with her, and that Charmian was giving the fact a significance out of all reason. They talked rather soberly, as two people do when a gayer third has left them, and they had little silences. They spoke of Charmian, and Cornelia praised her beauty and her heart, and said how everybody liked her at the Synthesis.
"Do they laugh at her a little, too?" Ludlow asked.
"Why?"
"She's rather romantic."
"Oh, I thought all girls were romantic."
"Yes? You're not."
"What makes you think so?" asked the girl. "I'm a great deal more romantic than is good for me. Don't you like romantic people? I do!"
"I don't believe I do," said Ludlow. "They're rather apt to make trouble. I don't mean Miss Maybough. She'll probably take it out in madly impossible art. Can she draw?"
Cornelia did not like to say what she thought of Charmian's drawing, exactly. She said, "Well, I don't know."
Ludlow hastened to say, "I oughtn't to have asked that about your friend."
"We're both in the Preparatory, you know," Cornelia explained. "I think Charmian has a great deal of imagination."
"Well, that's a good thing, if it doesn't go too far. Fortunately it can't, in the Preparatory."
At her door Cornelia did not know whether to ask him in, as she would have done in Pymantoning; she ended by not even offering him her hand; but he took it all the same, as if he had expected her to offer it.
XXII
Cornelia found herself in her room without knowing how she got there, or how long she had been there, when the man-voiced Irish girl came up and said something to her. She did not understand at first; then she made out that there was a gentleman asking for her in the parlor; and with a glance at her face in the glass, she ran down stairs. She knew it was Ludlow, and that he had thought of something he wanted to say, and had come back. It must be something very important; it might be an invitation to go with him somewhere; she wondered if they would have a chaperone.
In the vague light of the long parlor, where a single burner was turned half up, because it was not yet dark outside, a figure rose from one of the sofas and came toward her with one hand extended in gay and even jocose greeting. It was the figure of a young man, with a high forehead, and with nothing to obstruct the view of the Shakespearian dome it mounted into, except a modest growth of hair above either ear. He was light upon his feet, and he advanced with a rhythmical step. Cornelia tried to make believe that she did not know who it was; she recoiled, but her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth, and she could not gainsay him when he demanded joyfully, "Why, Nie! Why, Nelie! Don't you remember me? Dickerson, J. B., with Gates & Clarkson, art goods? Pymantoning? Days of yore, generally? Oh, pshaw, now!"
"Yes, I remember you," said Cornelia, in a voice as cold as the finger-tips which she inwardly raged to think she gave him, but was helpless to refuse, simply because he was holding out his hand to her.
"Well, it's good for sore eyes to see you again," said Mr. Dickerson, closing both of his hands on hers. "Let's see; it's four years ago! How the time flies! I declare, it don't hardly seem a day. Mustn't tell you how you've grown, I suppose? Well, we weren't much more than children, then, anyhow. Set down! I'm at home here. Old stamping-ground of mine, when I'm in New York; our house has its headquarters in New York, now; everything's got to come, sooner or later. Well, it's a great place."
Cornelia obeyed him for the same reason that she gave him her hand, which was no reason. "I heard your voice there at the door, when you came in a little while ago, and I was just going to rush out and speak to you. I was sure it was you; but thinks I, 'It can't be; it's too good to be true'; and I waited till I could see Mrs. Montgomery, and then I sent up for you. Didn't send my name; thought I'd like to surprise