The Healing Season by Ruth Axtell Morren Page B

learn the ways of the world soon enough.”
    “If the conduct of those young actresses backstage tonight is any indication, they haven’t learned from their mistakes. They seem to believe they may have any man they please with no consequences.”
    “Any man who can make it worth their while,” she countered in a hard voice.
    “What is the difference between that and one of the lightskirts hanging about the theater entrance?” he asked, his tone matching hers.
    “Between a common streetwalker and a woman who knows how to secure herself a tidy nest egg for her old age? There is a vast difference, Mr. Russell—the difference between ending up dead in some alleyway or living out one’s years in a comfortable house in a respectable part of town.”
    He swallowed, shaken by her convictions despite himself. “Is that what you have done?”
    “That is an impertinent question, Mr. Russell.”
    “You are right, Mrs. Neville. My apologies.”
    “Don’t use that disapproving tone with me. Come,” she said, her tone softening, “it is all very well for a young woman who has a father to defend her virtue. What happens to the one whose stepfather strips her of her virtue before she has scarcely entered womanhood?”
    “Is that what happened to Miss Simms?”
    She shrugged and looked away. “Who knows? ’Tis often enough the case.”
    She leaned her head back and stared at him through half-closed lids, looking in that moment dangerously seductive. His glance strayed down her slim white throat, and he felt his own throat go dry.
    “What about your morality, Mr. Russell? Dining late in the evening with a common actress, while your wife sits at home with the little ones? Does she wait up for you? Is she sitting by the fireside? Does she believe you are on a medical call?” Her soft, sultry words mocked him.
    “I am not married,” he answered steadily.
    “I am sorry.” She leaned forward, immediately contrite, the image of seductress vanished with the speed of a snuffed candle. “Have you been widowed long?”
    “I am neither wed nor widowed.”
    Her gray eyes opened wide. “I can scarcely credit what you say. You look old enough to have long since wed.”
    “The fact remains I have never entered into the state of matrimony.”
    “Excuse my impudence, but how old are you, Mr. Russell?”
    “Two-and-thirty this past summer,” he answered stiffly.
    She raised her eyebrows. “Why haven’t you married? Are you waiting for a woman who satisfies your high moral caliber?”
    “‘Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies,’” he quoted softly.
    She made an inelegant sound. “That’s because she probably doesn’t exist except as a figment of your imagination.”
    He ignored the mockery in her tone. “I am waitingfor the Lord’s choice for me. Up to now, He hasn’t made it clear. And, yes, she will be a virtuous woman.”
    She gave him a pitying look. “You are so sure about that. Women can be very crafty about their purity, you know. I have an acquaintance who has feigned virginity a half-dozen times.”
    “I know that my future wife will serve God, and her purity of spirit will shine through her.”
    “And how will you know she is the one God has chosen for you? Will He beat a drum when this virtuous woman appears and you will know you are to wed?”
    “I don’t know how He’ll let me know. I only know that He will.”
    “And what about you? Will you be as pure as you expect your future bride to be?”
    He could feel himself reddening in the face, but he refused to back down. “I have kept myself pure for my future wife.”
    He could see the incredulity in her eyes, and it irked him.
    “You must be a lonely man.” Before he had a chance to negate the charge, she answered for him, “No, of course you aren’t. You have your work. You don’t have time to be lonely. You wouldn’t have time for a wife. Where would you ever fit one in?”
    She gave a mirthless laugh. “We have