第70章 CHAPTER XXIV(4)

The apartment will be yours as long as you need it. Kuroki, of course, goes with me. It's merely going by convention on the blind side. To leave you something in my will wouldn't serve at all, I'm a tough old codger and may be marked down for a hale old ninety.

All I want is to make you happy and carefree."

"Cutty, I'd like to curl up in some corner and cry, gratefully. I didn't know there were such men. I just don't know what to do. It isn't as if you were asking me to be your wife. And as you say, I can't accept money. There is a pride in me that rejects the whole thing; but it may be the same fool pride that has cut away my friends. I ought to fall on your neck with joy: and here I am trying to look round corners! You are my father's friend, my mother's, mine. Why shouldn't I accept the proposition? You are alone, too. You have a perfect right to do as you please with your money, and I have an equally perfect right to accept your gifts.

We are all afraid of the world, aren't we? That's probably at the bottom of my doddering. Cutty, what is love?" she broke off, whimsically.

"Looking into mirrors and hunting for specks," he answered, readily.

"I mean seriously."

"So do I. Before I went round to the stage entrance to take your mother out to supper I used to preen an hour before the mirror. My collar, my cravat, my hair, the nap on my stovepipe, my gloves - terrible things! And what happened? Your dad, dressed in his office clothes, came along like a cyclone, walked all over my toes, and swooped up your mother right from under my nose. Now just look the proposition over from all angles. Think of yourself; let the old world go hang. They'll call it alimony. In a year or so you'll be free; and some chap like Tommy Conover will come along, and bang!

You'll know all about love. Here's old Brooklyn Bridge. I'll see you to the elevator. All nonsense that you should have the least hesitance."

Fifteen minutes later he was striding along Park Row. By the swing of his stride any onlooker would have believed that Cutty was in a hurry to arrive somewhere. Instead, one was only walking. Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk with the two currents of pedestrians flowing on each side of him, as a man might stop who saw some wonderful cloud effect. But there was nothing ecstatical in his expression; on the contrary, there was a species of bewildered terror. The psychology of all his recent actions had in a flash become vividly clear.

An unbelievable catastrophe had overtaken him. He loved Kitty, loved her with an intense, shielding passion, quite unlike that which he had given her mother. Such a thing could happen! He offered not the least combat; the revelation was too smashing to admit of any doubt. It was not a recrudescence of his love for Molly, stirred into action by the association with Molly's daughter.

He wanted Kitty for himself, wanted her with every fibre in his body, fiercely. And never could he tell her - now.

The tragic irony of it all numbed him. Fate hadn't played the game fairly. He was fifty-two, on the far side of the plateau, near sunset. It wasn't a square deal.

Still he stood there on the sidewalk, like a rock in the middle of a turbulent stream, rejecting selfish thoughts. Marry Kitty, and tell her the truth afterward. He knew the blood of her - loyalest of the loyal. He could if he chose play that sort of game - cheat her. He could not withdraw his proposition. If she accepted it he would have to carry it through. Cheat her.