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Humbly, obediently, her emotions yielded to him and the tears
streamed down her face, but her heart kept on crying: "Ask me - oh,
Anson, dearest, ask me!"
"Paula.... Paula!"
The words wrung her heart like hands, and Anson, feeling her
tremble, knew that emotion was enough. He need say no more,
commit their destinies to no practical enigma. Why should he, when
he might hold her so, biding his own time, for another year – forever?
He was considering them both, her more than himself. For a moment,
when she said suddenly that she must go back to her hotel, he
hesitated, thinking, first, "This is the moment, after all," and then:
"No, let it wait – she is mine...."
He had forgotten that Paula too was worn away inside with the
strain of three years. Her mood passed forever in the night.
He went back to New York next morning filled with a certain
restless dissatisfaction. Late in April, without warning, he received a
telegram from Bar Harbor in which Paula told him that she was
engaged to Lowell Thayer, and that they would be married
immediately in Boston. What he never really believed could happen
had happened at last.
Anson filled himself with whiskey that morning, and going to
the office, carried on his work without a break – rather with a fear of
what would happen if he stopped. In the evening he went out as usual,
saying nothing of what had occurred; he was cordial, humorous,
unabstracted. But one thing he could not help - for three days, in any
place, in any company, he would suddenly bend his head into his
hands and cry like a child.
V
In 1922 when Anson went abroad with the junior partner to
investigate some London loans, the journey intimated that he was to
be taken into the firm. He was twenty-seven now, a little heavy
without being definitely stout, and with a manner older than his years.
Old people and young people liked him and trusted him, and mothers
felt safe when their daughters were in his charge, for he had a way,
when he came into a room, of putting himself on a footing with the
oldest and most conservative people there. "You and I," he seemed to
say, "we're solid. We understand."