Robert Chambers - The Business of Life

How much did this man really mean of what he said to her? What did his liking for her signify other than the natural instinct of an idle young man for any pretty girl? What was he going to do about it? For she seemed to be conscious that, sooner or later, somewhere, sometime, he would do something further about it.

Did he mean to make love to her sometime? Was he doing it now? It resembled the preliminaries; she recognised them – had been aware of them almost from the very first.

Men had made love to her before – men in her own world, men in his world. She had learned something since her father died – not a great deal; perhaps more from hearsay than from experience. But some unpleasant knowledge had been acquired at first hand; two clients of her father's had contributed, and a student, named Harroun, and an amateur of soft paste statuettes, the Rev. Bertie Dawley.

Innocently and wholesomely equipped to encounter evil, cool and clear eyed mistress of herself so far, she had felt, with happy contempt, that her fate was her own to control, and had wondered what the word "temptation" could mean to any woman.

What Cynthia had admitted made her a little wiser, but still incredulous. Cold, hunger, debts, loneliness – these were not enough, as Cynthia herself had said. Nor, after all, was Cynthia's liking for Cairns. Which proved conclusively that woman is the arbiter of her own destiny.

Desboro, one knee crossed over the other, sat looking into the fire, which burned in the same fireplace where he had recently immolated the frivolous souvenirs of the past.

Perhaps some gay ghost of that scented sacrifice took shape for a moment in the curling smoke, for he suddenly frowned and passed his hand over his eyes in boyish impatience.

Something – the turn of his head and shoulders – the shape of them – she did not know what – seemed to set her heart beating loudly, ridiculously, without any apparent reason on earth. Too much surprised to be disturbed, she laid her slim hand on her breast, then against her throat, till her pulses grew calmer.

Resting her chin on her arm, she gazed over her shoulder into the fire. He had laid another log across the flames; she watched the bark catch fire, dully conscious, now, that her ideas were becoming as irresponsible and as reasonless as the sudden stirring of her heart had been.

For she was thinking how odd it would be if, like Cynthia, she too, ever came to care about a man of Desboro's sort. She'd see to it that she didn't; that was all. There were other men. Better still, there were to be no men; for her mind fastidiously refused to consider the only sort with whom she felt secure – her intellectual inferiors whose moral worthiness bored her to extinction.

Musing there, half turned on her chair, she saw Desboro rise, still looking intently into the fire, and stand so, his well-made, graceful figure, in silhouette, edged with the crimson glow.

"What do you see in it, Mr. Desboro?"

He turned instantly and came over to her:

"A bath of flames would be very popular," he said, "if burning didn't hurt. I was just thinking about it – how to invent – "

She quoted: "'But I was thinking of a plan to dye one's whiskers green.'"

He said: "I suppose you think me as futile as that old man 'a-settin' on a gate.'"

"Your pursuits seem to be about as useful as his."

"Why should I pursue things? I don't want 'em."

"You are hopeless. There is pleasure even in pursuit of anything, no matter whether you ever attain it or not. I will never attain wisdom, but it's a pleasure to pursue it."

"It's a pleasure even to pursue pleasure – and it's the only pleasure in pleasure," he said, so gravely that for a moment she thought with horror that he was trying to be precious. Then the latent glimmer in his eyes set them laughing, and she rose and went over to the sofa and curled up in one corner, abandoning all pretense of industry.

"Once," she said, "I knew a poet who emitted such precious thoughts. He was the funniest thing; he had the round, pale, ancient eyes of an African parrot, a pasty countenance, and a derby hat resting on top of a great bunch of colourless curly hair. And that's the way he talked, Mr. Desboro!"

He seated himself on the other arm of the sofa:

"Did you adore him?"

"At first. He was a celebrity. He did write some pretty things."

"What woke you up?"

She blushed.

"I thought so," observed Desboro.

"Thought what?"

"That he came out of his trance and made love to you."

"How did you know? Wasn't it dreadful! And he'd always told me that he had never experienced an emotion except when adoring the moon. He was a very dreadful young man – perfectly horrid in his ideas – and I sent him about his business very quickly; and I remember being a little frightened and watching him from the window as he walked off down the street in his soiled drab overcoat and the derby hat on his frizzly hair, and his trousers too high on his ankles – "

Desboro was so immensely amused at the picture she drew that her pretty brows unbent and she smiled, too.

"What did he want of you?" he asked.

"I didn't fully understand at the time – " she hesitated, then, with an angry blush: "He asked me to go to Italy with him. And he said he couldn't marry me because he had already espoused the moon!"

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