The Conflict [90]
when I've got anything serious to do--I love your perfume and your color and the wonderful softness of you----''
He pushed her away. ``Now--will you go?'' he cried.
His eyes were flashing. And she was trembling from head to foot.
She was gazing at him with a fascinated expression. ``I understand what you meant when you warned me to go,'' she said. ``I didn't believe it, but it was so.''
``Go--I tell you!'' he ordered.
``It's too late,'' said she. ``You can't send me away now--for you have kissed me. If I'm in your power, you're in my power, too.''
Moved by the same impulse both looked up the arbor toward the rear door of the house. There stood Selma Gordon, regarding them with an expression of anger as wild as the blood of the steppes that flowed in her veins. Victor, with what composure he could master, put out his hand in farewell to Jane. He had been too absorbed in the emotions raging between him and her to note Selma's expression. But Jane, the woman, had seen. As she shook hands with Victor, she said neither high nor low:
``Selma knows that I care. I told her the night of the riot.''
``Good-by,'' said Victor in a tone she thought it wise not to dispute.
``I'll be in the woods above the park at ten tomorrow,'' she said in an undertone. Then to Selma, unsmilingly: ``You're not interrupting. I'm going.'' Selma advanced. The two girls looked frank hostility into each other's eyes. Jane did not try to shake hands with her. With a nod and a forced smile of conventional friendliness upon her lips, she passed her and went through the house and into the street.
She lingered at the gate, opening and closing it in a most leisurely fashion--a significantly different exit from her furtive and ashamed entrance. Love and revolt were running high and hot in her veins. She longed openly to defy the world--her world.
VII
Impulse was the dominant strain in Selma Gordon's character--impulse and frankness. But she was afraid of Victor Dorn as we all are afraid of those we deeply respect--those whose respect is the mainstay of our self-confidence. She was moving toward him to pour out the violence that was raging in her on the subject of this flirtation of Jane Hastings. The spectacle of a useless and insincere creature like that trifling with her deity, and being permitted to trifle, was more than she could endure. But Victor, dropping listlessly to his chair and reaching for his pencil, was somehow a check upon her impetuousness. She paused long enough to think the sobering second thought. To speak would be both an impertinence and a folly. She owed it to the cause and to her friend Victor to speak; but to speak at the wrong time and in the wrong way would be worse than silence.
Said he: ``I was finishing this when she came. I'll be done in a minute. Please read what I've written and tell me what you think.''
Selma took up the loose sheets of manuscript and stood reading his inaugural of the new New Day. As she read she forgot the petty matter that had so agitated her a moment before. This salutatory--this address to the working class--this plan of a campaign to take Remsen City out of the hands of its exploiters and despoilers and make it a city fit for civilized residence and worthy of its population of intelligent, progressive workingmen--this leading editorial for the first number was Victor Dorn at his greatest and best. The man of action with all the enthusiasm of a dreamer. The shrewd, practical politician with the outlook of a statesman. How honest and impassioned he was; yet how free from folly and cant. Several times as she read Selma lifted her eyes to look at him in generous, worshipful admiration. She would not have dared let him see; she would not have dared speak the phrases of adoration of his genius that crowded to her lips. How he would have laughed at her--he who thought about himself as a personality not at all, but only as an instrument.
``Here's the rest of it,'' said he, throwing himself back in his chair and relighting his
He pushed her away. ``Now--will you go?'' he cried.
His eyes were flashing. And she was trembling from head to foot.
She was gazing at him with a fascinated expression. ``I understand what you meant when you warned me to go,'' she said. ``I didn't believe it, but it was so.''
``Go--I tell you!'' he ordered.
``It's too late,'' said she. ``You can't send me away now--for you have kissed me. If I'm in your power, you're in my power, too.''
Moved by the same impulse both looked up the arbor toward the rear door of the house. There stood Selma Gordon, regarding them with an expression of anger as wild as the blood of the steppes that flowed in her veins. Victor, with what composure he could master, put out his hand in farewell to Jane. He had been too absorbed in the emotions raging between him and her to note Selma's expression. But Jane, the woman, had seen. As she shook hands with Victor, she said neither high nor low:
``Selma knows that I care. I told her the night of the riot.''
``Good-by,'' said Victor in a tone she thought it wise not to dispute.
``I'll be in the woods above the park at ten tomorrow,'' she said in an undertone. Then to Selma, unsmilingly: ``You're not interrupting. I'm going.'' Selma advanced. The two girls looked frank hostility into each other's eyes. Jane did not try to shake hands with her. With a nod and a forced smile of conventional friendliness upon her lips, she passed her and went through the house and into the street.
She lingered at the gate, opening and closing it in a most leisurely fashion--a significantly different exit from her furtive and ashamed entrance. Love and revolt were running high and hot in her veins. She longed openly to defy the world--her world.
VII
Impulse was the dominant strain in Selma Gordon's character--impulse and frankness. But she was afraid of Victor Dorn as we all are afraid of those we deeply respect--those whose respect is the mainstay of our self-confidence. She was moving toward him to pour out the violence that was raging in her on the subject of this flirtation of Jane Hastings. The spectacle of a useless and insincere creature like that trifling with her deity, and being permitted to trifle, was more than she could endure. But Victor, dropping listlessly to his chair and reaching for his pencil, was somehow a check upon her impetuousness. She paused long enough to think the sobering second thought. To speak would be both an impertinence and a folly. She owed it to the cause and to her friend Victor to speak; but to speak at the wrong time and in the wrong way would be worse than silence.
Said he: ``I was finishing this when she came. I'll be done in a minute. Please read what I've written and tell me what you think.''
Selma took up the loose sheets of manuscript and stood reading his inaugural of the new New Day. As she read she forgot the petty matter that had so agitated her a moment before. This salutatory--this address to the working class--this plan of a campaign to take Remsen City out of the hands of its exploiters and despoilers and make it a city fit for civilized residence and worthy of its population of intelligent, progressive workingmen--this leading editorial for the first number was Victor Dorn at his greatest and best. The man of action with all the enthusiasm of a dreamer. The shrewd, practical politician with the outlook of a statesman. How honest and impassioned he was; yet how free from folly and cant. Several times as she read Selma lifted her eyes to look at him in generous, worshipful admiration. She would not have dared let him see; she would not have dared speak the phrases of adoration of his genius that crowded to her lips. How he would have laughed at her--he who thought about himself as a personality not at all, but only as an instrument.
``Here's the rest of it,'' said he, throwing himself back in his chair and relighting his