DOI article:
D'Arcy, Ella: The pleasure-pilgrim
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21806#0063
By Ella D’Arcy 59
by the same seductive lady ! Always the same thing, nothing
changed, but the flower, according to the season.”
When Campbell reached his room and changed his coat, he
threw the flower away into his stove.
Had it not been for Mayne, Miss Thayer mighthave triumphed
after all; might have convinced Campbell of her passion, or have
added another victim to her long list. But Mayne had set him-
self as determinedly to spoil her game as she was bent on winning
it. He had always the cynical word, the apt reminiscence ready,
whenever he saw signs on Campbell’s part of yielding. He was
very fond of Campbell. He did not wish to see him fall a prey to
the wiles of this little American syren. He had watched her
conduct in the past with a dozen different men ; he genuinely
believed she was only acting now.
Campbell, for his part, began to feel a curious and growing
irritation in the girl’s presence. Yet he did not avoid it ; he could
not well avoid it, she followed him about so persistently ; but his
speech began to overflow with bitterness towards her. He said the
cruellest things ; then remembering them afterwards when alone,
he blushed at his brutalities. But nothing he said ever altered her
sweetness of temper or weakened the tenacity of her purpose. His
rebuffs made her beautiful eyes run over with tears, but the harshest
of them never elicited the least sign of resentment. There would
have been something touching as well as comic in this dog-like
forgiveness, which accepted everything as welcome at his hands,
had he not been imbued with Mayne’s conviction that it was all an
admirable piece of acting. When for a moment he forgot the
histrionic theory, then invariably there would come a chance word
in her conversation which would fill him with cold rage. They
would be talking of books, travels, sport, what not, and she would
drop a reference to this man or to that. So-and-so had taken her to
Bullier’s,
by the same seductive lady ! Always the same thing, nothing
changed, but the flower, according to the season.”
When Campbell reached his room and changed his coat, he
threw the flower away into his stove.
Had it not been for Mayne, Miss Thayer mighthave triumphed
after all; might have convinced Campbell of her passion, or have
added another victim to her long list. But Mayne had set him-
self as determinedly to spoil her game as she was bent on winning
it. He had always the cynical word, the apt reminiscence ready,
whenever he saw signs on Campbell’s part of yielding. He was
very fond of Campbell. He did not wish to see him fall a prey to
the wiles of this little American syren. He had watched her
conduct in the past with a dozen different men ; he genuinely
believed she was only acting now.
Campbell, for his part, began to feel a curious and growing
irritation in the girl’s presence. Yet he did not avoid it ; he could
not well avoid it, she followed him about so persistently ; but his
speech began to overflow with bitterness towards her. He said the
cruellest things ; then remembering them afterwards when alone,
he blushed at his brutalities. But nothing he said ever altered her
sweetness of temper or weakened the tenacity of her purpose. His
rebuffs made her beautiful eyes run over with tears, but the harshest
of them never elicited the least sign of resentment. There would
have been something touching as well as comic in this dog-like
forgiveness, which accepted everything as welcome at his hands,
had he not been imbued with Mayne’s conviction that it was all an
admirable piece of acting. When for a moment he forgot the
histrionic theory, then invariably there would come a chance word
in her conversation which would fill him with cold rage. They
would be talking of books, travels, sport, what not, and she would
drop a reference to this man or to that. So-and-so had taken her to
Bullier’s,