The "Senator" still lingered. He was sorry for the young people; it had been a dull evening for them. In the goodness of his heart he tried to make it pleasant for them now; tried to remove the ill impression necessarily left by the general defeat; tried to be chatty, even tried to be gay. But the responses were sickly, there was no starting any enthusiasm; he would give it up and quit--it was a day specially picked out and consecrated to failures.
But when Gwendolen rose up promptly and smiled a glad smile and said with thankfulness and blessing, "Must you go?" it seemed cruel to desert, and he sat down again.
He was about to begin a remark when--when he didn't. We have all been there. He didn't know how he knew his concluding to stay longer had been a mistake, he merely knew it; and knew it for dead certain, too. And so he bade goodnight, and went mooning out, wondering what he could have done that changed the atmosphere that way. As the door closed behind him those two were standing side by side, looking at that door--looking at it in a waiting, second-counting, but deeply grateful kind of way. And the instant it closed they flung their arms about each other's necks, and there, heart to heart and lip to lip--
"Oh, my God, she's kissing it!"
Nobody heard this remark, because Hawkins, who bred it, only thought it, he didn't utter it. He had turned, the moment he had closed the door, and had pushed it open a little, intending to re-enter and ask what ill- advised thing he had done or said, and apologize for it. But he didn't re-enter; he staggered off stunned, terrified, distressed.
CHAPTER XXII.
Five minutes later he was sitting in his room, with his head bowed within the circle of his arms, on the table-final attitude of grief and despair. His tears were flowing fast, and now and then a sob broke upon the stillness. Presently he said:
"I knew her when she was a little child and used to climb about my knees; I love her as I love my own, and now--oh, poor thing, poor thing, I cannot bear it!--she's gone and lost her heart to this mangy materializee! Why didn't we see that that might happen? But how could we? Nobody could; nobody could ever have dreamed of such a thing. You couldn't expect a person would fall in love with a wax-work. And this one doesn't even amount to that."
He went on grieving to himself, and now and then giving voice to his lamentations.
"It's done, oh, it's done, and there's no help for it, no undoing the miserable business. If I had the nerve, I would kill it. But that wouldn't do any good. She loves it; she thinks it's genuine and authentic. If she lost it she would grieve for it just as she would for a real person. And who's to break it to the family! Not I--I'll die first. Sellers is the best human being I ever knew and I wouldn't any more think of--oh, dear, why it'll break his heart when he finds it out. And Polly's too. This comes of meddling with such infernal matters! But for this, the creature would still be roasting in Sheol where it belongs. How is it that these people don't smell the brimstone? Sometimes I can't come into the same room with him without nearly suffocating."
After a while he broke out again:
"Well, there's one thing, sure. The materializing has got to stop right where it is. If she's got to marry a spectre, let her marry a decent one out of the Middle Ages, like this one--not a cowboy and a thief such as this protoplasmic tadpole's going to turn into if Sellers keeps on fussing at it. It costs five thousand dollars cash and shuts down on the incorporated company to stop the works at this point, but Sally Sellers's happiness is worth more than that."
He heard Sellers coming, and got himself to rights. Sellers took a seat, and said:
"Well, I've got to confess I'm a good deal puzzled. It did certainly eat, there's no getting around it. Not eat, exactly, either, but it nibbled; nibbled in an appetiteless way, but still it nibbled; and that's just a marvel.