They moved off down the path toward the lake, Jerry talking earnestly.

I watched them for a moment in silence, wondering what crisis I had precipitated in Jerry"s affairs.

Beside me I heard the deep voice of Miss Gore.

"You see? He"s already madly infatuated with her."

"Yes, yes," I replied, still watching them. "And she?"

Miss Gore shrugged her thin shoulders.

"I don"t know. She won"t marry him. I doubt if she will ever marry."

"Thank G.o.d for that," I said feelingly. She looked up at me quickly.

"You don"t like Marcia?" she asked.

"No." I realized that I had gone too far, but I stood firm to my guns.

I was surprised that she didn"t resent my frankness. Instead of being angry she merely smiled.

"Mr. Canby, it is difficult for many of us who live in the world to realize the effect of luxury and over-refinement upon society! We live too close to it. Mr. Benham is an anachronism. I would have given much if he had not become interested in Marcia. She is not for him nor he for her. But I think it is his mind that attracts her--"

"Rubbish!" I broke in. "Has he no face, no body?"

She smiled at my impetuousness. Strangely enough, we were both too interested to resent mere forms of intercourse.

"It"s true. She has a good mind, but badly trained. His innocence fascinates, tantalizes her. I"ve watched them--heard them. She toys with it, testing it in a hundred ways. It"s like nothing she has ever known before. But she isn"t the kind you think she is. I doubt even if Jerry has kissed her. To Marcia men are merely so much material for experimentation. She has a reputation for heartlessness. I"m not sure that she isn"t heartless. It"s a great pity. She"s very young, but she"s already devoured with hypercriticism. She"s cynical, a philanderer. You can"t tamper with a pa.s.sion the way Marcia has done without doing it an injury. You see, I"m speaking frankly. I don"t quite understand why, but I"m not sorry."

I bowed my head in appreciation of her confidence. This woman improved upon acquaintance.

"You care for her," I said soberly. "I should have been more guarded."

"Yes, I care for her. She has many virtues. She gets along with women and I can understand her attraction for men. But she has confessed to me that men both attract and repel her. s.e.x-antagonism, I think the moderns call it--a desire to tease, to attract, to excite, to destroy.

She uses every art to play her game. It is her life. If any man conquered her she would be miserable. A strange creature, you will say, but--"

"Strange, unnatural, horrible!"

She smiled at my sober tone.

"And yet she is acting within her rights. She asks nothing that is not freely given."

"Women are curiously tolerant of moral imperfections in those they care for. Your Marcia is dangerous. I shall warn Jerry."

But she shook her dark head sagely.

"It will do no good. You will fail."

We walked slowly toward the house and I tried to make her understand that I was grateful for her interest. She was not pretty, but, as I had discovered, had some beauties of the mind which made her physical attractions a matter of small importance.

As we neared the terrace, a thought came to me and I paused.

"You know who the girl Una is?" I asked.

"Yes," she nodded, "but her name isn"t Smith."

"I was aware of that. Would you mind telling me who and what she is?"

She remained thoughtful a moment, fingering the stem of a plant.

"I don"t see why I shouldn"t. Her name is Habberton, Una Habberton.

She was visiting the Laidlaws here last summer. Her family, a mother and a lot of girls, live in the old house down in Washington Square.

They"re fairly well off, but Una has gone in for social work--spends almost all of her time at it--slumming. I don"t know much about her, but I think she must be pretty fine to give up all her social opportunities for that."

I smiled.

"She may have another idea of social opportunity," I said.

"Yes--you"re quite right. I used the wrong words. One is not accustomed in Marcia"s set to find that sort of thing an opportunity."

"Miss Van Wyck knows her?" I asked.

"Yes. Marcia is on a committee that provides money for this particular charity. They know each other. She came over to Briar Hills one night with Phil Laidlaw. Marcia saw her several times in our fields with her b.u.t.terfly net. You see, her name is unusual. Marcia guessed the rest."

"Thanks," I said. "I hope you"ve forgiven me for my churlishness. I should like to know you better if you"ll let me."

She turned her head toward me with a motherly smile.

"I don"t care for the society of men," she said amusedly. "They annoy me exceedingly."

CHAPTER XI

THE SIREN

Something went wrong with Jerry"s afternoon, for not long after lunch I heard his machine in the driveway. But I didn"t go out to meet him.

I knew that if there was anything he wanted to say to me he would come to the study door. But I heard him pa.s.s and go upstairs. I hadn"t been able to do any work at my book since yesterday morning, and the prospect of going on with it seemed to be vanishing with the hours.

The astounding frankness of Miss Gore had set me thinking. As may be inferred, I did not understand women in the least and hadn"t cared to, for their ways had not been my ways, nor mine theirs. But the woman"s revelations as to the character of her cousin had confirmed me in the belief that Jerry had gotten beyond his depth. I think I understood her motives in telling me. I was Jerry"s guardian and friend. If Miss Gore was Marcia"s cousin she was also her paid companion, her creature, bound less by the ties of kinship than those of convention.

I suppose it was Jerry"s helplessness that must have appealed to the mother in her, his youth, innocence and genuineness. Perhaps she was weary treading the mazes of deception and intrigue with which the girl Marcia surrounded herself. Jerry wasn"t fair game. All that was good in her had revolted at the maiming of a helpless animal.

For such, I am sure, Jerry already was. How much or how little the unconscious growth in the boy of the s.e.xual impulse had to do with his sudden subjugation by the girl it was impossible for me to estimate.

For if the impulse was newly born, it was born in innocence. This I knew from the nature of his comments on his experiences in the city.

Knowledge of all sorts he was acquiring, but, like Adam, of the fruit of the tree he had not tasted. And yet, even I, stoic though I was, had been sensible of the animal in the girl. Her voice, her gestures, her gait, all proclaimed her. Miss Gore had spoken of a psychic attraction. Bah! There is but one kind of affinity of a woman of this sort for a beautiful animal like Jerry!

It was bewildering for me to discover how deeply I was becoming involved in Jerry"s personal affairs. With the appointed day I had turned him adrift to work out in his future career, alone and unaided, my theory of life and his own salvation. And yet here, at the first sign of danger, I found myself flying to his defense as Jack Ballard would have it, like a hen that had hatched out a duckling. I reasoned with myself sternly that I feared nothing for Jerry. He would emerge from such an experience greater, stronger, purer even, and yet, in spite of my confidence, I found myself planning, devising something that would open the boy"s eyes before damage was done. I was solicitous for Jerry, but there were other considerations. Jerry wasn"t like other men. He had been taught to reason carefully from cause to effect. He would not understand intrigue, of course, or double dealing. They would bewilder him and he would put them aside, believing what he was told and acting upon it blindly. For instance, if this girl told him she cared for him, he would believe it and expect her to prove it, not in accordance with her notions of the obligation created, but in accordance with his own. There lay the difficulty, for he was all ideals, and she, as I suspected, had none.

There would be damage done, spiritual damage to Jerry, but what might happen to Marcia? Jerry was innocent, but he was no fool, and with all his gentleness he wasn"t one to be imposed upon. Flynn had understood him. He was polite and very gentle, but Sagorski, the White Hope, knew what he was when aroused. I wondered if Marcia Van Wyck with all her cleverness might miss this intuition.