Her words seemed to strike with soft yet bruising blows upon his heart. “To life. To love,” he answered.
“And what about Marian?” Mrs. Dallas inquired. And now, still gently, she withdrew her hand and leaned her cheek on it as, her elbow on the cushions of her chair, she bent her indolent but attentive gaze upon him. “I should have thought that dedication lay in that direction.”
His forehead was hot and his eyes, hurt, bewildered, indignant, challenged hers yet supplicated, too. “Please don’t let me think that I’m to hear mean conventionalities from you—as I have from Marian. You know,” he said, and his voice slightly shook, “that dedication isn’t a limiting, limited thing. You’ve read my books and cared for them, and understood them,—better, you made me feel, that I did myself,—so that you mustn’t pretend to forget. Love doesn’t shut out. It widens.”
“Does it?” said Mrs. Dallas. “And what,” she added, “were the mean conventionalities you heard from Marian? I’ve been wondering about Marian.”
“She is jealous,” said Rupert shortly, looking away. “I could hardly believe it, but she made it too plain. It seemed to take the foundation-stones of our life away to hear her. It made all our past, all the things I believed we shared, seem illusory. It made me feel that the Marian I’d loved and trusted was a stranger.”
Mrs. Dallas contemplated his averted face, and as she heard him her glance altered. It withdrew itself; it veiled itself; it became at once less kind and more indolent. “And you really don’t think Marian has anything to complain of?” she inquired presently.
“No, I do not,” said Rupert. “Nothing is taken from her.”
“Isn’t it? And if I became your mistress, would you still think she had nothing to complain of?” Mrs. Dallas asked the question in a tone of detached and impartial inquiry.
How far apart in the young man’s experience were theory and practice was manifested by the hot blush that sprang to his brow, the quick stare in which an acute eye might have read an ingenuous and provincial dismay. “My mistress?” he stammered. “You know that such a thought never entered my head.”
“Hasn’t it? Why not?”