The Beauty and the Bolshevist | Page 9

see you there."
"Disappointing that you did not see me there?"
"No," she replied, and then, less positively; "No; I meant it was disappointing that you were the kind of man who went to parties--and enjoyed them."
"It would be silly to go if you didn't enjoy them," he returned, lightly.
She turned to him very seriously. "You're right," she said; "it is silly--very silly, and it's just what I do. I consider parties like that the lowest, emptiest form of human entertainment. They're dull; they're expensive; they keep you from doing intelligent things, like studying; they keep you from doing simple, healthy things, like sleeping and exercising; they make you artificial; they make you civil to people you despise--they make women, at least, for we must have partners--"
"But why do you go, then?"
She was silent, and they looked straight and long at each other. Then she said, gravely:
"The answer's very humiliating. I go because I haven't anything else to do."
He did not reassure her. "Yes, that's bad," he said, after a second. "But of course you could not expect to have anything else to do when all your time is taken up like that. 'When the half gods go,' you know, 'the gods arrive.'"
The quotation was not new to Crystal; in fact, she had quoted it to Eddie not very long before, apropos of another girl to whom he had shown a mild attention, but it seemed to her as if she took in for the first time its real meaning. Whether it was the dawn, exhaustion, a stimulating personality, love, or mere accident, the words now came to her with all the beauty and truth of a religious conviction. They seemed to shake her and make her over. She felt as if she could never be sufficiently grateful to the person who had thus made all life fresh and new to her.
"Ah," she said, very gently, "that's it. I see. You won't believe me, but I assure you from now on I mean to be entirely different."
"Please, not too different."
"Oh yes, yes, as different as possible. I've been so unhappy, and unhappy about nothing definite--that's the worst kind, only that I have not liked the life I was leading."
She glanced at him appealingly. She had tried to tell this simple story to so many people, for she had many friends, and yet no one had ever really understood. Some had told her she was spoiled, more, that there was no use in trying to change her life because she would soon marry; most of them had advised her to marry and find out what real trouble was. Now, as she spoke she saw that this strange young man from the sea not only understood her discontent, but thought it natural, almost commonplace.
She poured it all out. "Only the worst thing," she ended, "is that I'm not really any good. There isn't anything else that I know how to do."
"I doubt that," he answered, and she began to doubt it, too. "I'm sure there are lots of things you could do if you put your mind on it. Did you ever try to write?"
Now, indeed, she felt sure that he was gifted with powers more than mortal--to have guessed this secret which no one else had ever suspected. She colored deeply.
"Why, yes," she answered, "I think I can--a little, only I've so little education."
"So little education?"
"Yes, I belong to the cultivated classes--three languages and nothing solid."
"Well, you know, three languages seem pretty solid to me," said Ben, who had wrestled very unsuccessfully with the French tongue. "You speak three languages, and let me see, you know a good deal about painting and poetry and jade and Chinese porcelains?"
She shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. "Oh, of course everyone knows about those things, but what good are they?"
They were a good deal of good to Ben. He pressed on toward his final goal. "What is your attitude toward fairies?" he asked, and Miss Cox would have heard in his tone a faint memory of his voice when he engaged a new office-boy.
Her attitude toward fairies was perfectly satisfactory, and he showed so much appreciation that she went on and told him her great secret in full. She had once had something published and been paid money for it--fifteen dollars--and probably never in her life had she spoken of any sum with so much respect. It had been, well, a sort of a review of a new illustrated edition of Hans Andersen's Tales, treating them as if they were modern stories, commenting on them from the point of view of morals and probability--making fun of people who couldn't give themselves up to the charm of a story unless it tallied with their own horrid little experiences of life. She told it, she said, very badly, but perhaps