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He was no intimidated New Yorker, who felt he must conduct himself for the eyes of others. Mrs. Wordling had not shown the quality to hold the fancy position she aspired to, in the little circle of artists at the Club; and retaliated by showing her power over the lion of this circle. She had challenged him to cross the street, knowing they would be locked in and that the Club would hear.
Slowly and without passion the elder woman now delivered herself: "People who think they think and who love themselves!... I have tried to make myself believe you were different. You are not different, Wordling. You are true to your kind, and not distinguished from them. David Cairns never rehearsed a part with Andrew Bedient. Men as full of real things as these two do not need rehearsals.
They wound through the park in the rainy dusk, emerging in Fifty-ninth Street; and even then, Beth did not care to ride, so they finished the distance to her studio in the Avenue crowd. More May days had passed. Bedient came in from one of his night-strolls, just as an open carriage stopped in front of the Club, and Mrs. Wordling called his name.
Wordling had asked for him to go up to her apartment, as soon as he came in. Five minutes later, he knocked at her door. "Is that you, Mr. Bedient?" she called. The voice came seemingly from an inner room; a cultivated voice, with that husky note in it which charms the multitude. Had he not a good mental picture of Mrs.
He wondered how the newspaper had obtained the account.... There was a light, quick knock at the door. "It isn't very often that a newspaper story is gotten up so effectively," Mrs. Wordling was saying. Apparently she had not heard the knock. Her voice, however, had fallen in a half-whisper, more penetrating than her usual low tones. "Do you suppose the hero will permit his name to be known?"
He must go away now... She thought of her wail to the Grey One that he would not go to the ocean with Wordling... It meant nothing to him; she could not punish him by keeping him away... But the picture that final inner lustre.
Wordling believed herself a more finished artist in these affairs. She wanted to prove this, while Bedient was the dominant man-interest of the Club. And now he surprised her. He was different from the man she had pictured. Equally well, she could have located him had he kissed her, or appeared confused with embarrassment.
Wordling was not an especial favorite with her. "They made it up beautifully between them, didn't they?" the actress observed, as she squeezed orange-juice into her spoon. "What?" "That story." "Who?" "Why, that story that friendship, storm-at-sea, Equatoria story done jointly by Messrs. Cairns and Bedient." "You think they rehearsed it, then?" Kate Wilkes asked softly. "Why, of course.
Kate Wilkes lived at the Smilax Club, as did Vina Nettleton, and, for the present, Mrs. Wordling. The actress was recently in from the road. Her play had not run its course, merely abated for the hot months. She was an important satellite, if not a stellar attraction. About noon, on the day following the party for Bedient, Mrs.
She thought of her temptation in the studio to hold him from the ocean, as a woman might, as a Wordling might. She had not needed quite to do that, merely to let herself go. The glorious lover in him had done more than she dreamed, in making her Beth of the bestowals, this day. In the sunlight, she had been one with him.
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