Winding Paths | Page 6

if she proved herself capable, recognising, through his skill at
reading character, that she might eventually prove invaluable in other
ways than mere letter-writing.
Dudley, seeing no farther than the fact of the City office, set his face
resolutely against it as long as he could; but, of course, in the end Hal
carried the day. Then came the shock of the knowledge that Lorraine
had gone on the stage; and if, as had been said before, he did not

actually picture the lurid exit to the lower regions Hal gave him credit
for, he was sufficiently upset to have wakeful nights and many anxious,
worried hours.
And to make it worse, Hal would not even be serious.
"Oh, don't look like that, Dudley!" she cried; "we really are not in any
immediate danger of selling our souls to the Prince of Darkness. You
dear old solemnsides! Just because Lorraine is going on the stage, I
believe you already see me in spangles, jumping through a hoop. Or
rather 'trying to', because it is a dead cert. I should miss the hoop, and
do a sort of double somersault over the horse's tail."
Dudley shut his firm lips a little more tightly, and looked hard at his
boots, without vouchsafing a reply.
"As a matter of fact," continued the incorrigible, "you ought to perceive
how beautifully life balances things, by giving a dangerously attractive
person like Lorraine a matter-of-fact, commonplace pal like myself to
restrain her, and at the same time ward of possible dangers from
various unoffending humans, who might fall hurtfully under her spell."
"It is only the danger to you that I have anything to do with."
"Oh fie, Dudley! as if I mattered half as much as Humanity with a
capital H."
"To me, personally, you matter far more in this particular case."
"And yet, really, the chief danger to me is that I might unconsciously
catch some reflection of Lorraine's charm and become dangerously
attractive myself, instead of just an outspoken hobbledehoy no one
takes seriously."
"I am not afraid of that," he said, evoking a peal of laughter of which he
could not even see the point; "but since you are quite determined to go
into the City as a secretary, instead of procuring a nice comfortable
home as a companion, or staying quietly here to improve your mind, I

naturally feel you will encounter quite enough dangers without getting
mixed up in a theatrical set. Though, really," in a grumbling voice, "I
can't see why you don't stay at home like any sensible girl. If I am not
rich, I have at least enough for two."
"But if I stayed at home, and lived on you, Dudley, I should feel I had
to improve my mind by way of making you some return; and you can't
think how dreadfully my mind hates the idea of being improved. And if
I went to some dear old lady as companion, she would be sure to die in
an apoplectic fit in a month, and I should be charged with manslaughter.
And I can't teach, because I don't know anything. The only serious
danger I shall run as Mr. Elliott's secretary will be putting an occasional
addition of my own to his letters, in a fit of exasperation, or driving his
sub-editor mad; and he seems willing to risk that."
"You are likely to run greater dangers than that if you allow yourself to
be drawn into a theatrical circle."
"What sort of dangers?... Oh, my dear, saintly episcopal architect, what
foundations of darkness are you building upon now, out of a little
old-fashioned, out-of-date prejudice which you might have dug up from
some of your studies in antiquity books? There are just as many
dangers outside the theatrical world as in it, for the sort of woman
dangers are attractive to; and little Sunday-school teachers have come
to grief, while famous actresses have won through unscathed."
Dudley's face expressed both surprise and distaste.
"I wonder what you know about it anyway. I think you are talking at
random. Certainly no dangers would come near you if you listened to
my wishes and settled down quietly at home. If you don't care about
living in Bloomsbury, I will take a small house in the suburbs, and you
can amuse yourself with the housekeeping, and tennis, and that sort of
thing."
"And when you want to marry?"
"I shall not want to marry. I am wedded to my profession."

"O Dudley!... Dudley!..." She slipped off the table where she had been
jauntily seated, and came and stood beside him, passing her arm
through his. "Can't you see I'd just die of a little house in the suburbs,
looking after the housekeeping: it's the most dreadful and awful thing
on the