The House of Mystery | Page 4

following his line of conjecture; "it was invented by the original Yankee philosopher, a person named Socrates. I like it after everything--I'm an American. I'm one of those rare birds in the Eastern United States, a native of New York City."
"Well, then,"--her manner had, for the first time, the brightness which goes with youth, plus the romantic adventure--"I like it not only after anything but before anything--I'm an American, too."
A sense of irritation rose in him. He had let conjecture grow to conclusion in the most reckless fashion. And why should he care so much that he had risked offending a mere passing acquaintance of the road?
"Somehow, I had taken it for granted--your reference to India I suppose--that you were English."
"Oh, no! Though an English governess made me fond of the English. I'm another of the rare birds. I was hardly out of New York in my life until five years ago, when my aunt took me for a stay of two years in the Orient--in India at least. I've been very happy to be back."
The current of talk drifted then from the coast of confidences to the open sea of general conversation. He pulled himself up once or twice by the reflection that he was talking too much about himself. Once--and he remembered it with blushes afterward--he went so far as to say, "I didn't really need to be a doctor, any more than I needed to go to the Philippines--the family income takes care of that. But a man should do something." Nevertheless, she seemed disposed to encourage him in this course, seemed most to encourage him when he told his stories about the Philippine Army of Occupation.
"Oh, tell me another!" she would cry. And once she said, "If there were a piano here, I venture you'd sing Mandelay." "That would I," he answered with a half sigh. And at last, when he was running down, she said, "Oh, please don't stop! It makes me crazy for the Orient!" "And me!" he confessed. Before luncheon was over, he had dragged out the two or three best stories in his wanderer's pack, and especially that one, which he saved for late firesides and the high moments of anecdotal exchange, about the charge at Caloocon. She drank down these tales of hike and jungle and firing-line like a seminary girl listening to her first grownup caller. For his part, youth and the need of male youth to spread its bright feathers before the female of its species, drove him on to more tales. He contrived his luncheon so that they finished and paid simultaneously--and in the middle of his story about Sergeant Jones, the dynamite and the pack mule. So, when they returned to the parlor-car, nothing was more simple, natural and necessary than that he should drop into the vacant chair beside her, and continue where he left off. He felt, when he had finished, the polite necessity of leading the talk back to her; besides, he had not finished his Study of the Unknown Girl. He returned, then, to the last thread which she had left hanging.
"So you too are glad to be at home!" he said. "I'm so glad that I don't want to lose sight either of a skyscraper or of apple trees for years and years. I can't remember when I've ever wanted to stay in one place before."
She laughed--the first full laugh he had heard from her. It was low and deep and bubbling, like water flowing from a long-necked bottle.
"Just a moment ago, we were confessing that we were crazy for the Orient."
"I'm glad to be caught in an inconsistency!" he answered. "I've been afraid, though, that this desire to roost in one place was a sign of incipient old age."
She looked at him directly, and for a moment her fearless glance played over him, as in alarm.
"Oh, I shouldn't be afraid of that," she said. "I don't know your age, of course, but if it will reassure you any, I'd put it at twenty-eight. And that, according to Peter Ibbertson, is quite the nicest age." Her face, with its unyouthful capacity for sudden seriousness, grew grave. Her deep blue eyes gazed past him out of the window.
"I'm only twenty-four, but I know what it is to think that middle age is near--to dread it--especially when I half suspect I haven't spent the interest on my youth." She stopped.
Dr. Blake held his very breath. His instincts warned him that she faltered at one of those instincts when confidence lies close to the lips. But she did not give it. Instead, she caught herself up with a perfunctory, "I suppose everyone feels that way at times."
Although he wanted that confidence, he was clever enough not to reach for it at this point. Instead, he