“Oh, a fool,” replied Halleck. “All
flirts are fools.”
“I think she’s more wicked than foolish.”
“Oh, no, flirts are better than they seem,—perhaps
because men are better than flirts think. But
they make misery just the same.”
“Yes,” sighed Olive. “Poor
Marcia, poor Marcia! But I suppose that, if it
were not Mrs. Macallister, it would be some one else.”
“Given Bartley Hubbard,—yes.”
“And given Marcia. Well,—I don’t
like being mixed up with other people’s unhappiness,
Ben. It’s dangerous.”
“I don’t like it either. But you
can’t very well keep out of people’s unhappiness
in this world.”
“No,” assented Olive, ruefully.
The talk fell, and Halleck attempted to read a newspaper,
while Olive looked out of the window. She presently
turned to him. “Did you ever fancy any
resemblance between Mrs. Hubbard and the photograph
of that girl we used to joke about,—your
lost love?”
“Yes,” said Halleck.
“What’s become of it,—the photograph?
I can’t find it any more; I wanted to show it
to her one day.”
“I destroyed it. I burnt it the first evening
after I had met Mrs. Hubbard. It seemed to me
that it wasn’t right to keep it.”
“Why, you don’t think it was her
photograph!”
“I think it was,” said Halleck. He
took up his paper again, and read on till they left
the cars.
That evening, when Halleck came to his sister’s
room to bid her good night, she threw her arms round
his neck, and kissed his plain, common face, in which
she saw a heavenly beauty.
“Ben, dear,” she said, “if you don’t
turn out the happiest man in the world, I shall say
there’s no use in being good!”
“Perhaps you’d better say that after all
I wasn’t good,” he suggested, with a melancholy
smile.
“I shall know better,” she retorted.
“Why, what’s the matter, now?”
“Nothing. I was only thinking. Good
night!”
“Good night,” said Halleck. “You
seem to think my room is better than my company, good
as I am.”
“Yes,” she said, laughing in that breathless
way which means weeping next, with women. Her
eyes glistened.
“Well,” said Halleck, limping out of the
room, “you’re quite good-looking with
your hair down, Olive.”
“All girls are,” she answered. She
leaned out of her doorway to watch him as he limped
down the corridor to his own room. There was something
pathetic, something disappointed and weary in the movement
of his figure, and when she shut her door, and ran
back to her mirror, she could not see the good-looking
girl there for her tears.
“Hello!” said Bartley, one day after the
autumn had brought back all the summer wanderers to
the city, “I haven’t seen you for a month
of Sundays.” He had Ricker by the hand,
and he pulled him into a doorway to be a little out
of the rush on the crowded pavement, while they chatted.
