Once he had begun to talk of Mendel she would not let him leave the subject.
"Do you think he's a genius?" she would ask.
"Gawd! I don't know. He says he is a genius, and I suppose time will show whether it is true or not. But why do you want to talk of him?"
"I don't know. I'm interested. Perhaps because he is different."
"Well, you've had tea with him. That is about as much as is good for you. If you were my sister I wouldn't let you know him."
"My dear girl, there are certain things in life that a young girl ought never to know."
"What things? Is there anything worse than what your mother talks about at her meetings? Girls know all about that nowadays, and it is no good pretending we don't."
"Talking about them is one thing, coming in contact with them is another. Kühler is a Jew, and he comes from the East End, where they don't have any decent pleasures. He's infernally good-looking in a hurdy-gurdy sort of way. Gawd! Women look at him and off they go."
"But he cares for poetry and the Bible and he loves pictures. . . ."
"It doesn't seem to make any difference."
During this talk he had begun to find Morrison extraordinarily pretty and lovable, and he said tenderly:--
"Won't you take off your hat and let me see your beautiful hair?"
She refused, and asked him more about Mendel, and in exasperation at the unintended snub he told her the true story of Hetty Finch, not concealing his own share in it, but implying that Mendel's terrible immorality had corrupted him and led to his downfall.
"And what is going to become of Hetty Finch?"
"That's the extraordinary part of it," said Mitchell. "She has found someone to marry her."
He leaned against the mantelpiece and dropped his head in his hands and groaned.
"Gawd!" he said. "If it weren't for you I don't know what would become of me." And he was so moved by his own thoughts that tears trickled down his nose and made dark spots on the whitened hearth.
"I can't ask you to marry me," he said mournfully. "I'm unworthy, but I want to be your friend."
She made no reply, and he was forced to ask rather lamely:--
It was then that he took her to the Paris Café, where, all in a turmoil through her new knowledge of men and women, she hardly knew what she was doing, and gave Mendel the curt nod which had so disgruntled him.