Love, The Fiddler | Page 7

always such sticklers for the truth--for sincerity, you know--weren't we?"
"I have no business to correct you," he said humbly. "I resigned all my pretensions that morning in the old house."
"Well, so long as you love me still!" she exclaimed, with a little mocking laugh. "That's the great thing, isn't it? I mean for me, of course. I am greedy for love. It makes me feel so safe and comfortable to think there are whole rows of men that love me. When you have a great fortune you begin to appreciate the things that money cannot buy."
"Oh, your money!" he said. That word in her mouth always stung him.
"Well, you ought to hate my money," she remarked cheerfully. "It queered you, didn't it? And then all rich people are detestable, anyway--selfish to the core, and horrid. Do you know that sometimes when I have flirted awfully with a man at a dinner or somewhere, and the next day he telephones--and the telephone is in the next room--I've just said: 'Oh, bother! tell him I'm out,' rather than take the trouble to get up from my chair. And a nice man, too!"
"I thought I might be treated the same way," he said.
"Then you thought wrong, Frank," she returned, with a sudden change from her tone of flippancy and lightness. "I haven't sunk quite as low as that, you know. I meant other people--I didn't mean you, Frank, dear."
This was said with such a little ring of kindness that Frank was moved.
"Then the old days still count for something?" he said.
"Oh, yes!" she said.
"But not enough to hurt?" he ventured.
"Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't," she returned. "It depends on how good a time I'm having. But I hate to think I'm weak and selfish and vain, and that the only person I really care for is myself. I value my self-esteem, and it often gets an awful jar. Sometimes I feel like a girl that has run away from home-- diamonds and dyed hair, you know--and then wakes up at night and cries to think of what a price she has paid for all her fine things!" Florence waved her hand towards the alabaster statue of Pocahontas, with a little ripple of self-disdain. She was in a strange humour, and beneath the surface of her apparent gaiety there ran an undercurrent of bitterness and contempt for herself. Her eyes were unusually brilliant, and her cheeks were pink enough to have been rouged. The sight of her old lover had stirred many memories in her bosom.
"And what about my job, Florence?" he said, changing the conversation. "I've caught the yachting idea, too. Can it be managed?"
"Oh, I want to talk to you about that," she said.
"Well, go on," he said, as she hesitated.
"I am so afraid of hurting your feelings, Frank," she said with a singular timidity.
"My feelings are probably tougher than you think," he returned.
"You will think so badly of me," she said. "You will be affronted."
"It sounds as though you wanted to engage me for your butler," he said. Then, as she still withheld the words on her lips, he went on: "Don't be uneasy about saying it, Florence. If it's impossible--why, that's the end of it, of course, and no harm done."
"I want you to come," she said simply.
"Then, what's the trouble?" he demanded, getting more and more mystified. "I don't mind being an artificer the least bit. I like to work with my hands. I'm a good mechanic, and I like it."
"I want you for my chief engineer," she said.
This was news, indeed. Frank's face betrayed his keen pleasure. He had never soared to the heights of asking or expecting THAT.
"I had to dismiss the last one," she went on. "That's the reason why I'm still here, and not two days out, as I had expected. He locked himself in his cabin and shot at people through the door, and told awful lies to the newspapers."
"If it's anything about my qualifications," he said, thinking he had found the reason of her backwardness, "I don't fancy I'll have any trouble to satisfy you. I don't want to toot my own horn, Florence, but really, you know, I am rated a first-class man. I'll prove that by my certificates and all that, or give me two weeks' trial, and see for yourself."
"Oh, it isn't that," she said.
"Then, what is it?" he broke out. "Only the other day they offered me a Western Ocean liner, and, if you like, I'll send you the letter. If I am good enough for a big passenger ship, I guess I can run the Minnehaha to please you!"
"Frank," she returned, "it is not a question of your competency at all. You know very well I'd trust my life to you, blindfold. It's --it's the social