"You can afford to be very calm," she said, "because this is only play to
you; I know it. I've known it all along. I'm a good listener and
not--unattractive. But what is play for you is not necessarily play for
me. I am going away from here."
For the first time, he found himself believing in her sincerity. Why, the
girl was white. He didn't want to hurt her. If she cried--he was at the
mercy of any woman who cried.
"Give up your training?"
"What else can I do? This sort of thing cannot go on, Dr. Max."
She did cry then--real tears; and he went over beside her and took her in
his arms.
"Don't do that," he said. "Please don't do that. You make me feel like a
scoundrel, and I've only been taking a little bit of happiness. That's
all. I swear it."
She lifted her head from his shoulder.
"You mean you are happy with me?"
"Very, very happy," said Dr. Max, and kissed her again on the lips.
The one element Carlotta had left out of her calculations was herself. She
had known the man, had taken the situation at its proper value. But she
had left out this important factor in the equation,--that factor which in
every relationship between man and woman determines the equation,--the
woman.
Into her calculating ambition had come a new and destroying element. She
who, like K. in his little room on the Street, had put aside love and the
things thereof, found that it would not be put aside. By the end of her
short vacation Carlotta Harrison was wildly in love with the younger
Wilson.
They continued to meet, not as often as before, but once a week, perhaps.
The meetings were full of danger now; and if for the girl they lost by this
quality, they gained attraction for the man. She was shrewd enough to
realize her own situation. The thing had gone wrong. She cared, and he
did not. It was all a game now, not hers.
All women are intuitive; women in love are dangerously so. As well as she
knew that his passion for her was not the real thing, so also she realized
that there was growing up in his heart something akin to the real thing for
Sidney Page. Suspicion became certainty after a talk they had over the
supper table at a country road-house the day after Christine's wedding.
"How was the wedding--tiresome?" she asked.
"Thrilling! There's always something thrilling to me in a man tying
himself up for life to one woman. It's--it's so reckless."