"Oh," her tone was startled, "you shouldn't have taken all that I said in earnest."
"In a way, yes. I have been in here so often and have looked at your grandfather's picture. He was a great little man--you can tell from his eyes--they seem to speak at times."
"Yes. Of how he hated to be little, and how he triumphed when fame came at last."
It was the first time that he had ever owned it. Even as a tiny boy he had brazened it out, boasting of his mental achievements and slurring the weakness of his stunted body.
"I know," she had shut the kitchen door behind her, and they were standing in the hallway alone, "I know. Every man must want to be big."
She was only the girl who had waited on the table, but as she stood there, looking at him with luminous eyes, he burned with dull resentment, envying the blond boy who had sprawled at the head of the supper table. After all, it was to such a man as Otto Brand that this woman would some day turn.
He spoke almost roughly: "Size isn't everything." She flushed. "How rude you must think me," she said; "but I have been so interested in dissecting your grandfather that I forgot--you--"
Van Alen was moved by an impulse that he could not control, a primitive impulse that was not in line with his usual repression.
"I am tempted to make you remember me," he said slowly, and after that there was a startled silence. And then she went away.
As he passed the sitting-room on his way up-stairs, he looked in, and spoke to Otto Brand.
More than any of the other brothers, Otto typified strength and beauty, but in his eyes was never a dream, his brain had mastered nothing. He was playing idly with the yellow cat, but he stopped at Van Alen's question.
"Her great-grandfather and yours were neighbors," the boy said, with his cheeks flushing; "they own the next farm."
The boy nodded. "They ain't got a cent. They're land poor. That's why she's here. But she don't need to work."
"There's plenty that wants to marry her round about," was the boy's self-conscious summing up.
With a sense of revolt, Van Alen left him, and, undressing in the room with the canopy bed, he called up vaguely the vision of a little girl who had visited them in the city. She had had green eyes and freckles and red hair. Beyond that she had made no impression on his callowness. And her name was Mazie Wetherell.