Arms and the Woman

"It is true," he replied kindly. "There are any number of reasons for

my declining it, but I cannot make them public. Is that all?"

"Yes, sir; thank you;" and I backed away.

"Are you a reporter?" asked the girl, as I was about to pass by her.

"Yes, I am."

"Do you draw pictures?"

"No, I do not."

"Do you write novels?"

"No," with a nervous laugh.

There is nothing like the process of interrogation to make one person

lose interest in another.

"Oh; I thought perhaps you did," she said, and turned her back to me.

I passed through the darkened halls of the house and into the street.

I never expected to see her again, but it was otherwise ordained. We

came together three years later at Block Island. She was eighteen now,

gathering the rosy flowers of her first season. She remembered the

incident in the garden, and we laughed over it. A few dances, two or

three evenings on the verandas, watching the sea, moon-lit, as it

sprawled among the rocks below us, and the even tenor of my way ceased

to be. I appreciated how far she was above me; so I worshipped her

silently and from afar. I told her my ambitions, confidences so

welcome to feminine ears, and she rewarded me with a small exchange.

She, too, was an orphan, and lived with her uncle, a rich banker, who,

as a diversion, consented to represent his country at foreign courts.

Her given name was Phyllis. I had seen the name a thousand times in

print; the poets had idealised it, and the novelists had embalmed it in

tender phrases. It was the first time I had ever met a woman by the

name of Phyllis. It appealed to my poetic instinct. Perhaps that was

the cause of it all. And then, she was very beautiful. In the autumn

of that year we became great friends; and through her influence I began

to see beyond the portals of the mansions of the rich. Matthew Prior's

Chloes and Sir John Suckling's Euphelias lost their charms. Henceforth

my muse's name became Phyllis. I took her to the opera when I didn't

know where I was going to breakfast on the morrow. I sent her roses

and went without tobacco, a privation of which woman knows nothing.

Often I was plunged into despair at my distressed circumstances. Money

to her meant something to spend; to me it meant something to get. Her

income bothered her because she could not spend it; my income was

mortgaged a week in advance, and did not bother me at all. This was

the barrier at my lips. But her woman's intuition must have told her

that she was a part and parcel of my existence.