“You are a little unjust, my dearest friend,” said the young man.
“I know the world,” she replied; but she raised her eyes in saying it, and looked at him with a sad kindness that separated him from the world she knew. “I don’t judge it—only see it as it is. It seeks happiness, it avoids unhappiness. To be unfortunate is to be lost, in its eyes—to sink from sight. To be fortunate is to have a radiance around one; and the world seeks radiance.”
After looking at him she again bent her eyes, and still sewed on while she spoke. “When I needed it, it abandoned me. When I was in the dark, it did not look for me. I strayed—through stubborn folly, perhaps; perhaps, too, through generous ignorance—into a quicksand, and not a hand was held out to me. I was allowed to sink; I was déclassée, I am déclassée, in the eyes of all of those who were of my world.” The cold flame of a long resentment burned in her steady voice. “I have tested average human nature,” she resumed, after a slight pause, in which he saw her breast heave slowly. “It is a severe test, I own; but, after it, it is with difficulty that I can trust again. I have no wish to know people who, if I were in dire straits, would pass over on the other side of the way. The few friends I have I have proved—the comtesse, Madame Dépressier, Lady Vibert, Monsieur Daunay,—who had much to bear from my husband,—Sophie; there are a few more, very few; and then, you, my friend.”
She stopped sewing—the rapid movements of her hand had been almost automatic—and looked at him, her work falling to her knee. “Come here,” she said, holding out her hand to him, “come here. Have I seemed harsh to you?” Her sudden smile dwelt on him with a divine sweetness. “I am harsh—but not to you.”
Damier, with an eagerness almost pathetically boyish, had sprung to her side, and she took his hand, smiling up at him. “Not to you. You have enlarged my trust—need I say how much? Don’t ask me to alloy it with dubious admixtures.”
His love for her was yet so founded on a sort of sacred fear that at this moment of delicious happiness he did not dare to stoop and confess all with a lover’s kiss upon her hair, did not even dare to look a confession of more than a responsive affection.
She pressed his hand, still smiling at him, and then, resuming her sewing, “Sit near me,” she said, “so I can see that you are not fancying that I am harsh with you!”
At such moments he could see in her eyes, that caressed one, made sweetest amends to one, touches of what must once have been enchanting roguishness.
“But I am still going to risk your harshness,” he said; “I am still going to ask you to let your trust in me include my friend. She would stand tests. Won’t you take my word for it?”
“I believe that I would take your word for anything.”