Cowperwood glowed with a strange feeling of approval and enthusiasm at this manifestation of real interest. He liked jade himself very much, but more than that the feeling that prompted this expression in another. Roughly speaking, it might have been said of him that youth and hope in women--particularly youth when combined with beauty and ambition in a girl--touched him. He responded keenly to her impulse to do or be something in this world, whatever it might be, and he looked on the smart, egoistic vanity of so many with a kindly, tolerant, almost parental eye. Poor little organisms growing on the tree of life--they would burn out and fade soon enough. He did not know the ballad of the roses of yesteryear, but if he had it would have appealed to him. He did not care to rifle them, w.i.l.l.y-nilly; but should their temperaments or tastes incline them in his direction, they would not suffer vastly in their lives because of him. The fact was, the man was essentially generous where women were concerned.

"How nice of you!" he commented, smiling. "I like that." And then, seeing a note-book and pencil beside her, he asked, "What are you doing?"

"Just sketching."

"Let me see?"

"It"s nothing much," she replied, deprecatingly. "I don"t draw very well."

"Gifted girl!" he replied, picking it up. "Paints, draws, carves on wood, plays, sings, acts."

"All rather badly," she sighed, turning her head languidly and looking away. In her sketch-book she had put all of her best drawings; there were sketches of nude women, dancers, torsos, bits of running figures, sad, heavy, sensuous heads and necks of sleeping girls, chins up, eyelids down, studies of her brothers and sister, and of her father and mother.

"Delightful!" exclaimed Cowperwood, keenly alive to a new treasure.

Good heavens, where had been his eyes all this while? Here was a jewel lying at his doorstep--innocent, untarnished--a real jewel. These drawings suggested a fire of perception, smoldering and somber, which thrilled him.

"These are beautiful to me, Stephanie," he said, simply, a strange, uncertain feeling of real affection creeping over him. The man"s greatest love was for art. It was hypnotic to him. "Did you ever study art?" he asked.

"No."

"And you never studied acting?"

"No."

She shook her head in a slow, sad, enticing way. The black hair concealing her ears moved him strangely.

"I know the art of your stage work is real, and you have a natural art which I just seem to see. What has been the matter with me, anyhow?"

"Oh no," she sighed. "It seems to me that I merely play at everything.

I could cry sometimes when I think how I go on."

"At twenty?"

"That is old enough," she smiled, archly.

"Stephanie," he asked, cautiously, "how old are you, exactly?"

"I will be twenty-one in April," she answered.

"Have your parents been very strict with you?"

She shook her head dreamily. "No; what makes you ask? They haven"t paid very much attention to me. They"ve always liked Lucille and Gilbert and Ormond best." Her voice had a plaintive, neglected ring.

It was the voice she used in her best scenes on the stage.

"Don"t they realize that you are very talented?"

"I think perhaps my mother feels that I may have some ability. My father doesn"t, I"m sure. Why?"

She lifted those languorous, plaintive eyes.

"Why, Stephanie, if you want to know, I think you"re wonderful. I thought so the other night when you were looking at those jades. It all came over me. You are an artist, truly, and I have been so busy I have scarcely seen it. Tell me one thing."

"Yes."

She drew in a soft breath, filling her chest and expanding her bosom, while she looked at him from under her black hair. Her hands were crossed idly in her lap. Then she looked demurely down.

"Look, Stephanie! Look up! I want to ask you something. You have known something of me for over a year. Do you like me?"

"I think you"re very wonderful," she murmured.

"Is that all?"

"Isn"t that much?" she smiled, shooting a dull, black-opal look in his direction.

"You wore my bracelet to-day. Were you very glad to get it?"

"Oh yes," she sighed, with aspirated breath, pretending a kind of suffocation.

"How beautiful you really are!" he said, rising and looking down at her.

She shook her head.

"No."

"Yes!"

"No."

"Come, Stephanie! Stand by me and look at me. You are so tall and slender and graceful. You are like something out of Asia."

She sighed, turning in a sinuous way, as he slipped his arm her. "I don"t think we should, should we?" she asked, naively, after a moment, pulling away from him.

"Stephanie!"

"I think I"d better go, now, please."

Chapter XXVI

Love and War

It was during the earlier phases of his connection with Chicago street-railways that Cowperwood, ardently interesting himself in Stephanie Platow, developed as serious a s.e.x affair as any that had yet held him. At once, after a few secret interviews with her, he adopted his favorite ruse in such matters and established bachelor quarters in the down-town section as a convenient meeting-ground. Several conversations with Stephanie were not quite as illuminating as they might have been, for, wonderful as she was--a kind of artistic G.o.dsend in this dull Western atmosphere--she was also enigmatic and elusive, very. He learned speedily, in talking with her on several days when they met for lunch, of her dramatic ambitions, and of the seeming spiritual and artistic support she required from some one who would have faith in her and inspire her by his or her confidence. He learned all about the Garrick Players, her home intimacies and friends, the growing quarrels in the dramatic organization. He asked her, as they sat in a favorite and inconspicuous resort of his finding, during one of those moments when blood and not intellect was ruling between them, whether she had ever--

"Once," she naively admitted.

It was a great shock to Cowperwood. He had fancied her refreshingly innocent. But she explained it was all so accidental, so unintentional on her part, very. She described it all so gravely, soulfully, pathetically, with such a brooding, contemplative backward searching of the mind, that he was astonished and in a way touched. What a pity! It was Gardner Knowles who had done this, she admitted. But he was not very much to blame, either. It just happened. She had tried to protest, but-- Wasn"t she angry? Yes, but then she was sorry to do anything to hurt Gardner Knowles. He was such a charming boy, and he had such a lovely mother and sister, and the like.