She turned her head toward me with a motherly smile.
"I don't care for the society of men," she said amusedly. "They annoy me exceedingly."
Something went wrong with Jerry's afternoon, for not long after lunch I heard his machine in the driveway. But I didn't go out to meet him. I knew that if there was anything he wanted to say to me he would come to the study door. But I heard him pass and go upstairs. I hadn't been able to do any work at my book since yesterday morning, and the prospect of going on with it seemed to be vanishing with the hours.
The astounding frankness of Miss Gore had set me thinking. As may be inferred, I did not understand women in the least and hadn't cared to, for their ways had not been my ways, nor mine theirs. But the woman's revelations as to the character of her cousin had confirmed me in the belief that Jerry had gotten beyond his depth. I think I understood her motives in telling me. I was Jerry's guardian and friend. If Miss Gore was Marcia's cousin she was also her paid companion, her creature, bound less by the ties of kinship than those of convention. I suppose it was Jerry's helplessness that must have appealed to the mother in her, his youth, innocence and genuineness. Perhaps she was weary treading the mazes of deception and intrigue with which the girl Marcia surrounded herself. Jerry wasn't fair game. All that was good in her had revolted at the maiming of a helpless animal.
For such, I am sure, Jerry already was. How much or how little the unconscious growth in the boy of the sexual impulse had to do with his sudden subjugation by the girl it was impossible for me to estimate. For if the impulse was newly born, it was born in innocence. This I knew from the nature of his comments on his experiences in the city. Knowledge of all sorts he was acquiring, but, like Adam, of the fruit of the tree he had not tasted. And yet, even I, stoic though I was, had been sensible of the animal in the girl. Her voice, her gestures, her gait, all proclaimed her. Miss Gore had spoken of a psychic attraction. Bah! There is but one kind of affinity of a woman of this sort for a beautiful animal like Jerry!
It was bewildering for me to discover how deeply I was becoming involved in Jerry's personal affairs. With the appointed day I had turned him adrift to work out in his future career, alone and unaided, my theory of life and his own salvation. And yet here, at the first sign of danger, I found myself flying to his defense as Jack Ballard would have it, like a hen that had hatched out a duckling. I reasoned with myself sternly that I feared nothing for Jerry. He would emerge from such an experience greater, stronger, purer even, and yet, in spite of my confidence, I found myself planning, devising something that would open the boy's eyes before damage was done. I was solicitous for Jerry, but there were other considerations. Jerry wasn't like other men. He had been taught to reason carefully from cause to effect. He would not understand intrigue, of course, or double dealing. They would bewilder him and he would put them aside, believing what he was told and acting upon it blindly. For instance, if this girl told him she cared for him, he would believe it and expect her to prove it, not in accordance with her notions of the obligation created, but in accordance with his own. There lay the difficulty, for he was all ideals, and she, as I suspected, had none. There would be damage done, spiritual damage to Jerry, but what might happen to Marcia? Jerry was innocent, but he was no fool, and with all his gentleness he wasn't one to be imposed upon. Flynn had understood him. He was polite and very gentle, but Sagorski, the White Hope, knew what he was when aroused. I wondered if Marcia Van Wyck with all her cleverness might miss this intuition.