“This is the sort of thing I mean.
Now where is Nicole—she’s gone off somewhere.
Is she upstairs in her room?
What am I supposed to do?
I never know whether it’s something innocent or whether I ought to go find her.”
“Perhaps she just wants to be by herself—people living alone get used to loneliness.”
Seeing that Miss Warren was not listening he stopped.
“I’ll take a look around.”
For a moment all the outdoors shut in with mist was like spring with the curtains drawn.
Life was gathered near the hotel.
Dick passed some cellar windows where bus boys sat on bunks and played cards over a litre of Spanish wine.
As he approached the promenade, the stars began to come through the white crests of the high Alps.
On the horseshoe walk overlooking the lakeNicole was the figure motionless between two lamp stands, and he approached silently across the grass.
She turned to him with an expression of:
“Here YOU are,” and for a moment he was sorry he had come.
“Your sister wondered.”
“Oh!”
She was accustomed to being watched.
With an effort she explained herself:
“Sometimes I get a little—it gets a little too much.
I’ve lived so quietly.
To-night that music was too much.
It made me want to cry—”
“I understand.”
“This has been an awfully exciting day.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to do anything anti-social—I’ve caused everybody enough trouble.
But to-night I wanted to get away.”
It occurred to Dick suddenly, as it might occur to a dying man that he had forgotten to tell where his will was, that Nicole had been “re-educated” by Dohmler and the ghostly generations behind him; it occurred to him also that there would be so much she would have to be told.
But having recorded this wisdom within himself, he yielded to the insistent face-value of the situation and said:
“You’re a nice person—just keep using your own judgment about yourself.”
“You like me?”
“Of course.”
“Would you—” They were strolling along toward the dim end of the horseshoe, two hundred yards ahead.
“If I hadn’t been sick would you—I mean, would I have been the sort of girl you might have—oh, slush, you know what I mean.”
He was in for it now, possessed by a vast irrationality.
She was so near that he felt his breathing change but again his training came to his aid in a boy’s laugh and a trite remark.
“You’re teasing yourself, my dear.
Once I knew a man who fell in love with his nurse—” The anecdote rambled on, punctuated by their footsteps.
Suddenly Nicole interrupted in succinct Chicagoese:
“Bull!”
“That’s a very vulgar expression.”
“What about it?” she flared up.
“You don’t think I’ve got any common sense—before I was sick I didn’t have any, but I have now.
And if I don’t know you’re the most attractive man I ever met you must think I’m still crazy.
It’s my hard luck, all right—but don’t pretend I don’t KNOW—I know everything about you and me.”
Dick was at an additional disadvantage.
He remembered the statement of the elder Miss Warren as to the young doctors that could be purchased in the intellectual stockyards of the South Side of Chicago, and he hardened for a moment.
“You’re a fetching kid, but I couldn’t fall in love.”
“You won’t give me a chance.”