The Wheel of Life | Page 4

has two idols in the market place which, I fancy, you may be predestined to see demolished. He is simply off his head to meet Roger Adams, the editor of _The_--something or other I never heard of--and--remember your budding days and be charitable--a lady who writes poems and signs herself Laura Wilde. I prepared him for the inevitable catastrophe by assuring him that the harmless Mr. Adams eats with his knife, and that the lady, as she writes books, isn't worth much at love-making--the purpose for which woman was created by God and cultivated by man. Alas, though, the young are a people of great faith!
Commend me to Mrs. Bridewell, whom I haven't seen since I had the honour of assisting at the wedding.
Yours ever, BEVERLY PIERCE.
As she finished her reading, Gerty broke into a laugh and carelessly threw the letter aside on the blue satin quilt.
"I'm glad to hear that somebody has read Laura's poems," she observed.
"But what in thunder am I to do with the chap?" enquired Perry. "God knows I don't go in for literature, and that's all he's good for I dare say."
"Oh, well, he can eat, I guess," commented Gerty, with consoling irony.
"I've asked Roger Adams to luncheon," pursued Perry, too concerned to resent her lack of sympathy, "but there are nine chances to one that he will stay away."
"Experience has taught me," rejoined Gerty sweetly, "that your friend Adams can be absolutely counted on to stay away. Do you know," she resumed after a moment's thought, "that, though he's probably the brainiest man of our acquaintance, I sometimes seriously wonder what you see in him."
A flush of anger darkened Perry's clear skin, and this sudden change gave him an almost brutal look. "I'd like to know if I'm a blamed fool?" he demanded.
Her merriment struck pleasantly on his ears.
"Do you want to destroy the illusion in which I married you?" she asked. "It was, after all, simply the belief that size is virtue."
The flush passed, and he took in a full breath which expanded his broad chest. "Well, I'm big enough," he answered, "but it isn't Adam's fault that he hasn't got my muscle."
With a leisurely glance in the mirror, he settled his necktie in place, twisted the short ends of his moustache, and then stooped to kiss his wife before going out.
"Don't you let yourself get seedy and lose your looks," he said as he left the room.
When he had gone she made a sudden ineffectual effort to rise from bed; then as if oppressed by a fatigue that was moral rather than physical, she fell back again and turned her face wearily from the mirror. So the morning slipped away, the luncheon hour came and went, and it was not until the afternoon that she gathered energy to dress herself and begin anew the inevitable and agonising pursuit of pleasure. The temptation of the morning had been to let go--to relax in despair from the fruitlessness of her endeavor--and the result of this brief withdrawal was apparent in the order which she gave the footman before the open door of her carriage.
"To Miss Wilde's first"--the words ended abruptly and she turned eagerly, with outstretched hand, to a man who had hurried toward her from the corner of Fifth Avenue.
"So you haven't forgotten me in six months, Arnold," she said, with a sweetness in which there was an almost imperceptible tone of bitterness.
He took her hand in both of his, pressing it for an instant in a quick muscular grasp which had in it something of the nervous vigor that lent a peculiar vibrant quality to his voice.
"And I couldn't have done it in six years," he replied, as a singularly charming smile illumined his forcible rather than regular features, and brought out the genial irony in his expressive light gray eyes. "If I'd gone to Europe to forget you it would have been time thrown away, but I had something better on my hands than that--I've been buying French racing automobiles--"
As he finished he gave an impatient jerk to the carriage door, a movement which, like all his gestures, sprang from the nervous energy that found its outlet in the magnetism of his personality. People sometimes said that he resembled Perry Bridewell, who was, in fact, his distant cousin, but the likeness consisted solely in a certain evident possession of virile power--a quality which women are accustomed to describe as masculine. He was not tall, and yet he gave an impression of bigness; away from him one invariably thought of him as of unusual proportions, but, standing by his side, he was found to be hardly above the ordinary height. The development of his closely knit figure, the splendid breadth of his chest and shoulders, the slight projection of his heavy brows