“The one who used scent and used to look so long at me?”
“Yes, he was old and rather horrid, but he knew what he was talking about. He said then you would be the most attractive woman in Europe. I heard the same thing from all my friends, and it’s true. You have something rare and perfect—”
These were great words. Mathilde, accustomed all her life to receive information from her mother, received this; and for the first time felt the egotism of her beauty awake, a sense of her own importance the more vivid because she had always been humble-minded. She did not look at her mother; she sat up very straight and stared as if at new fields before her, while a faint smile flickered at the corners of her mouth—a smile of an awakening sense of power.
“What you have,” Adelaide went on, “ought to bring great happiness, great position, great love; and how can I let you throw yourself away at eighteen on a commonplace boy with a glib tongue and a high opinion of himself? Don’t tell me that it will make you happy. That would be the worst of all, if you turned out to be so limited that you were satisfied,—that would be a living death. O my darling, I give you my word that if you will give up this idea, ten years from now, when you see this boy, still glib, still vain, and perhaps a little fat, you will actually shudder when you think how near he came to cutting you off from the wonderful, full life that you were entitled to.” And then, as if she could not hope to better this, Adelaide sprang up, and left the girl alone.
Mathilde rose, too, and looked at herself in the glass. She was stirred, she was changed, she was awakened, but awakened to something her mother had not counted on. Almost too gentle, too humble, too reasonable, as she had always been, the drop of egotism which her mother had succeeded in instilling into her nature served to solidify her will, to inspire her with a needed power of aggression.
She nodded once at her image in the mirror.
“Well,” she said, “it’s my life, and I’m willing to take the consequences.”
CHAPTER XIII
When Mathilde emerged from the subway into the sunlight of City Hall Park, Pete was nowhere to be seen. She had spent several minutes wandering in the subterranean labyrinth which threatened to bring her to Brooklyn Bridge and nowhere else, so she was a little late for her appointment; and yet Pete was not there. He had promised to be waiting for her. This was a more important occasion than the meeting in the museum and more terrifying, too.
Their plans were simple. They were going to get their marriage license, they were going to be married immediately, they were then going to inform their respective families, and start two days later for San Francisco.