“Well, what did you want to leave the Newtons for then?” he asked sullenly.
“I can’t see where else we can go now if you won’t let me come to see you once in a while.
We can’t go any place else.”
The thought gave Roberta pause.
Plainly this relationship was not to be held within conventional lines.
At the same time she did not see how she could possibly comply.
It was too unconventional — too unmoral — bad.
“I thought we took it,” she said weakly and placatively, “just so that we could go places on Saturday and Sunday.”
“But where can we go Saturday and Sunday now?
Everything’s closed.”
Again Roberta was checked by these unanswerable complexities which beleaguered them both and she exclaimed futilely,
“Oh, I wish I knew what to do.”
“Oh, it would be easy enough if you wanted to do it, but that’s always the way with you, you don’t want to.”
She stood there, the night wind shaking the drying whispering leaves.
Distinctly the problem in connection with him that she had been fearing this long while was upon her.
Could she possibly, with all the right instruction that she had had, now do as he suggested.
She was pulled and swayed by contending forces within herself, strong and urgent in either case.
In the one instance, however painful it was to her moral and social mood, she was moved to comply — in another to reject once and for all, any such, as she saw it, bold and unnatural suggestion.
Nevertheless, in spite of the latter and because of her compelling affection she could not do other than deal tenderly and pleadingly with him.
“I can’t, Clyde, I can’t.
I would if I could but I can’t.
It wouldn’t be right.
I would if I could make myself, but I can’t.”
She looked up into his face, a pale oval in the dark, trying to see if he would not see, sympathize, be moved in her favor.
However, irritated by this plainly definite refusal, he was not now to be moved.
All this, as he saw it, smacked of that long series of defeats which had accompanied his attentions to Hortense Briggs.
He was not going to stand for anything now like that, you bet.
If this was the way she was going to act, well let her act so — but not with him.
He could get plenty of girls now — lots of them — who would treat him better than this.
At once, and with an irritated shrug of the shoulders, as she now saw, he turned and started to leave her, saying as he did so,
“Oh, that’s all right, if that’s the way you feel about it.”
And Roberta dumfounded and terrified, stood there.
“Please don’t, go, Clyde.
Please don’t leave me,” she exclaimed suddenly and pathetically, her defiance and courage undergoing a deep and sad change.
“I don’t want you to. I love you so, Clyde.
I would if I could.
You know that.”
“Oh, yes, I know, but you needn’t tell me that” (it was his experience with Hortense and Rita that was prompting him to this attitude).
With a twist he released his body from her arm and started walking briskly down the street in the dark.
And Roberta, stricken by this sudden development which was so painful to both, called,
“Clyde!” And then ran after him a little way, eager that he should pause and let her plead with him more.
But he did not return.
Instead he went briskly on.
And for the moment it was all she could do to keep from following him and by sheer force, if need be, restrain him. Her Clyde!
And she started running in his direction a little, but as suddenly stopped, checked for the moment by the begging, pleading, compromising attitude in which she, for the first time, found herself.
For on the one hand all her conventional training was now urging her to stand firm — not to belittle herself in this way — whereas on the other, all her desires for love, understanding, companionship, urged her to run after him before it was too late, and he was gone.
His beautiful face, his beautiful hands.
His eyes.
And still the receding echo of his feet.
And yet so binding were the conventions which had been urged upon her up to this time that, though suffering horribly, a balance between the two forces was struck, and she paused, feeling that she could neither go forward nor stand still — understand or endure this sudden rift in their wonderful friendship.