A Fountain Sealed

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

"Good heaven, my dear Imogen! if you are so poor, surely she can learn to do up her own hair!" Jack burst out, the more vehemently from the fact that Mrs. Upton's unprotesting, unexplanatory departure had, to his own consciousness, involved him with Imogen in a companionship of crudity and inappropriateness. She would not interfere with their frankness, but she would not be frank with them. She didn't care a penny for what his impression of her might be. Imogen might fit as many responsibilities upon her shoulders as she liked and, with her long training in a school of reticences and composures, she would remain placid and indifferent. So Jack worked it out, and he resented, for Imogen and for himself, such tact and such evasion. He wished that they had been more crude, more inappropriate. Thank heaven for crudeness if morality as opposed to manners made one crude. He entrenched himself in that morality now, open-eyed to its seeming priggishness, to say, "And it's a bigger question than that of her pleasures and yours, Imogen. It's a question of right and wrong. Mary needs you. Your mother ought not to keep a maid if other people's needs are to be sacrificed to her luxuries."

Imogen was looking thoughtfully into the fire, her calmness now not the result of mastery; her own serene assurance was with her.

"I've thought of all that, Jack; I've weighed it, and though I feel it, as you do, a question of right and wrong, I don't feel that I can force it upon her. It would be like taking its favorite doll from a child. She is trying, I do believe, to atone; she is trying to do her duty by making, as it were, une acte de présence; one wants to be very gentle with her; one doesn't want to make things more difficult than they must already seem. Poor, dear little mama. But as for me, Jack, it's more than pleasures that I have to give up. I have to say no to some of those claims that I've given my life to. It's like cutting into my heart to do it."

She turned away her head to hide the quiet tears that rose involuntarily, and by the sight of her noble distress, by the realization, too, of such magnanimity toward the trivial little mother, Jack's inner emotion was pushed, suddenly, past all the bolts and barriers. Turning a little pale, he leaned forward and took her hand, stammering as he said: "Dear, dearest Imogen, you know—you know what I want to ask—whenever you will let me speak; you know the right I want to claim—"

It had come, the moment of avowal; but they had glided so quietly upon it that he felt himself unprepared for his own declaration. It wad Imogen's tranquil acceptance, rather than his own eagerness, that made the situation seem real.

"I know, dear Jack, of course I know," she said. "It has been a deep, a peaceful joy for a long time to feel that I was first with you. Let it rest there, for the present, dear Jack."

"I've not made anything less joyful or less peaceful for you by speaking?"

"No, no, dear. It's only that I couldn't think of it, for some time yet."

"You promise me that, meanwhile, you will think of me, as your friend, just as happily as before?"

"Just as happily, dear Jack; I could never, as long as you are you and I am I, think of you in any other way." And she went on, with her tranquil radiance of aspect, "I have always meant, you know, to make something of my life before I chose what to do with it."