"Yes," said Clive, reddening.
"All right; there's nothing more, then. It's time to retire. You've
had your amusement, and you've paid for it like a gentleman--very much
like a gentleman--rather exorbitantly. That's the way a gentleman
always pays. So now suppose you return to your own sort and coyly
reappear amid certain circles recently neglected, and which, at one
period of your career, you permitted yourself to embellish and adorn
with your own surpassing personality."
They both laughed; there had been, always, a very tolerant
understanding between them.
Then Clive's face grew graver.
"Father," he said, "I've tried remaining away. It doesn't do any good.
The longer I stay away from her, the more anxious I am to go back....
It's really friendship I tell you."
"You're not in love with her, are you, Clive?"
The son hesitated: "No!... No, I can't be. I'm very certain that I am
not."
"What would you do if you were?"
"But--"
"What would you do about it?"
"I don't know."
"Marry her?"
"I couldn't do that!" muttered Clive, startled. Then he remained
silent, his mind crowded with the component parts of that vague
sum-total which had so startled him at the idea of marrying Athalie
Greensleeve.
Partly his father's blunt question had jarred him, partly the idea of
marrying anybody at all. Also the mere idea of the storm such a
proceeding would raise in the world he inhabited, his mother being the
storm-centre, dispensing anathema, thunder, and lightning, appalled
him.
"What!"
"I couldn't do that," he repeated, gazing rather blankly at his
father.
"You could if you had to," said his father, curtly. "But I take your
word it couldn't come to that."
The boy flushed hotly, but said nothing. He shrank from comprehending
such an impossible situation, ashamed for himself, ashamed for
Athalie, resenting even the exaggerated and grotesque possibility of
such a thing--such a monstrous and horrible thing playing any part in
her life or in his.
The frankness and cynicism of Bailey, Sr., had possibly been pushed
too far. Clive became restless; and the calm entente cordiale ended
for a while.
Ended also his visits to Athalie for a while, the paternal
conversation having, somehow, chilled his desire to see her and
spoiled, for the time anyway, any pleasure in being with her.
Also his father offered to help him out financially; and, somehow, he
felt as though Bailey, Sr., was paying for his own gifts to Athalie.
Which idea mortified him, and he resolved to remain away from her
until he recovered his self-respect--which would be duly recovered,
he felt certain, when the next coupons fell due and he could detach
them and extinguish the parental loan.