Decision is always a mental relief, hesitance a curse. Kitty, having
shifted her burdens to the broad shoulders of Cutty, felt as she reached
the lobby as if she had left storm and stress behind and entered calm.
She would marry Cutty; she had published the fact, burned her bridges.
She had stepped into the car, her heart full of cold fury. Now she began
to find excuses for Hawksley's conduct. A sick brain; he was not really
accountable for his acts. Her own folly had opened the way. Of course
she would never see him again. Why should she? Their lives were as far
apart as the Volga and the Hudson.
Bernini met her in the lobby. "I've got a cab for you, Miss Conover," he
said as if nothing at all had happened.
"Have you Cutty's address?"
"Yes."
"Then take me at once to a telegraph office. I have a very important
message to send him."
"All right, Miss Conover."
"Say: 'Decision made. It is yes.' And sign it just Kitty."
Without being conscious of it her soul was still in the clouds, where it
had been driven by the music of the fiddle; thus, what she assumed to be
a normal sequence of a train of thought was only a sublime impulse. She
would marry Cutty. More, she would be his wife, his true wife. For his
tenderness, his generosity, his chivalry, she would pay him in kind.
There would be no nonsense; love would not enter into the bargain;
but there would be the fragrance of perfect understanding. That he
was fifty-two and she was twenty-four no longer mattered. No more
loneliness, no more genteel poverty; for such benefits she was ready to
pay the score in full. A man she was genuinely fond of, a man she could
look up to, always depend upon.
Was there such a thing as perfect love? She had her doubts. She reasoned
that love was what a body decided was love, the psychological moment
when the physical attraction became irresistible. Who could tell before
the fact which was the true and which the false? Lived there a woman,
herself excepted, who had not hesitated between two men--a man who had
not doddered between two women--for better or for worse? What did the
average woman know of the man, the average man know of the woman--until
afterward? To stake all upon a guess!
She knew Cutty. Under her own eyes he had passed through certain proving
fires. There would be no guessing the manner of man he was. He was
fifty-two; that is to say, the grand passion had come and gone. There
would be mutual affection and comradeship.