When Maggie sped away from Cedar Crest in the low seat of the roadster beside the happy Dick, she felt herself more of a criminal than at any time in her life, and a criminal that miraculously was making her escape out of an inescapable set of circumstances.
Beyond her relief at this escape she did not know these first few minutes what she thought or felt. Too much had happened, and what had happened had all turned out so differently from what she had expected, for her to set in orderly array this chaos of reactions within herself and read the meaning of that afternoon's visit. She managed, with a great effort, to keep under control the outer extremities of her senses, and thus respond with the correct "yes" or "no" or "indeed" when some response from her was required by Dick's happy conversation.
Near Roslyn they swung off the turnpike into an unfrequented, shady road. Dick steered to one side beneath a locust-tree and silenced the motor.
"Why are you stopping?" she asked in sudden alarm.
"So we can talk without a piece of impertinent machinery roaring interruptions at us," replied Dick with forced lightness. And then in a voice he could not make light: "I want to talk to you about--about my sister. Isn't she splendid?"
"She is!" There was no wavering of her thoughts as Maggie emphatically said this.
"I'm mighty glad you like her. She certainly liked you. She's all the family I've got, and since you two hit it off so well together I hope--I hope, Maggie--"
And then Dick plunged into it, stammeringly, but earnestly. He told her how much he loved her, in old phrases that his boyish ardor made vibrantly new. He loved her! And if she would marry him, her influence would make him take the brace all his friends had urged upon him.
She'd make him a man! And she could see how pleased it would make his sister. And he would do his best to make Maggie happy--his very best!
The young super-adventuress--she herself had mentally used the word "adventuress" in thinking of herself, as being more genteel and mentally aristocratic than the cruder words by which Barney and Old Jimmie and their kind designated a woman accomplice--this young super-adventuress, who had schemed all this so adroitly, and worked toward it with the best of her brain and her conscious charm, was seized with new panic as she listened to the eager torrent of his imploring words, as she gazed into the quivering earnestness of his frank, blue-eyed face. She wished she could get out of the machine and run away or sink through the floor-boards of the car. For she really liked Dick.
"I'm--I'm not so good as you think," she whispered. And then some unsuspected force within her impelled her to say: "Dick, if you knew the truth--"
He caught her shoulders. "I know all the truth about you I want to know! You're wonderful, and I love you! Will you marry me? Answer that. That's all I want to know!"
He had checked the confession that impulsively had surged toward her lips. Silent, her eyes wide, her breath coming sharply, she sat gazing at him. . . . And then from out the portion of her brain where were stored her purposes, and the momentum of her pride and determination, there flashed the realization that she had won! The thing that Barney and Old Jimmie had prepared and she had so skillfully worked toward, was at last achieved! She had only to say "yes," and either of those two plans which Barney had outlined could at once be put in operation--and there could be no doubt of the swift success of either. Dick's eager, trusting face was guarantee that there would come no obstruction from him.
She felt that in some strange way she had been caught in a trap. Yes, what they had worked for, they had won! And yet, in this moment of winning, as elements of her vast dizziness, Maggie felt sick and ashamed--felt a frenzied desire to run away from the whole affair. For Maggie, cynical, all-confident, and eighteen, was proving really a very poor adventuress.
"Please, Maggie"--his imploring voice broke in upon her--"won't you answer me? You like me, don't you?--you'll marry me, won't you?"
"I like you, Dick," she choked out--and it was some slight comfort to her to be telling this much of the truth--but--but I can't marry you."
"Maggie!" It was a cry of surprised pain, and the pain in his voice shot acutely into her. "From the way you acted toward me--I thought--I hoped--" He sharply halted the accusation which had risen to his lips.
"I'm not going to take that answer as final, Maggie," he said doggedly. "I'm going to give you more time to think it over--more time for me to try. Then I'll ask you again."
That which prompted Maggie's response was a mixture of impulses: the desire, and this offered opportunity, to escape; and a faint reassertion of the momentum of her purpose. For with one such as Maggie, the set purposes may be seemingly overwhelmed, but death comes hard.
"All right," she breathed rapidly. "Only please get me back as quickly as you can. I'm to have dinner with my--my cousin, and I'll be very late."
Dick drove her into the city in almost unbroken silence and left her at the great doors of the Grantham, abustle with a dozen lackeys in purple livery. She stood a moment and watched him drive away. He really was a nice boy--Dick.
As she shot up the elevator, she thought of a hitherto forgotten element of that afternoon's bewildering situation. Barney Palmer! And Barney was, she knew, now up in her sitting-room, impatiently waiting for her report of what he had good reason to believe would prove a successful experience. If she told the truth--that Dick had proposed, just as they had planned for him to do--and she had refused him--why, Barney--!
She seemed caught on every side!
