"Are the Mexicans a new people?"
"They who will rule the Mexicans are. All American women I dare say have bad taste in gowns,—and so the vain ones and rich ones send to Paris for their finery; but I think our taste in men is generally good. We like our philosophers; we like our poets; we like our genuine workmen;—but we love our heroes. I would have you a hero, Paul." He got up from his chair and walked about the room in an agony of despair. To be told that he was expected to be a hero at the very moment in his life in which he felt more devoid of heroism, more thoroughly given up to cowardice than he had ever been before, was not to be endured! And yet, with what utmost stretch of courage,—even though he were willing to devote himself certainly and instantly to the worst fate that he had pictured to himself,—could he immediately rush away from these abstract speculations, encumbered as they were with personal flattery, into his own most unpleasant, most tragic matter! It was the unfitness that deterred him and not the possible tragedy. Nevertheless, through it all, he was sure,—nearly sure,—that she was playing her game, and playing it in direct antagonism to the game which she knew that he wanted to play. Would it not be better that he should go away and write another letter? In a letter he could at any rate say what he had to say;—and having said it he would then strengthen himself to adhere to it. "What makes you so uneasy?" she asked; still speaking in her most winning way, caressing him with the tones of her voice. "Do you not like me to say that I would have you be a hero?"
"Winifrid," he said, "I came here with a purpose, and I had better carry it out."
"What purpose?" She still leaned forward, but now supported her face on her two hands with her elbows resting on her knees, looking at him intently. But one would have said that there was only love in her eyes;—love which might be disappointed, but still love. The wild cat, if there, was all within, still hidden from sight. Paul stood with his hands on the back of a chair, propping himself up and trying to find fitting words for the occasion. "Stop, my dear," she said. "Must the purpose be told to-night?"
"Why not to-night?"
"Paul, I am not well;—I am weak now. I am a coward. You do not know the delight to me of having a few words of pleasant talk to an old friend after the desolation of the last weeks. Mrs. Pipkin is not very charming. Even her baby cannot supply all the social wants of my life. I had intended that everything should be sweet to-night. Oh, Paul, if it was your purpose to tell me of your love, to assure me that you are still my dear, dear friend, to speak with hope of future days, or with pleasure of those that are past,—then carry out your purpose. But if it be cruel, or harsh, or painful; if you had come to speak daggers;—then drop your purpose for to-night. Try and think what my solitude must have been to me, and let me have one hour of comfort."
Of course he was conquered for that night, and could only have that solace which a most injurious reprieve could give him. "I will not harass you, if you are ill," he said.
"I am ill. It was because I was afraid that I should be really ill that I went to Southend. The weather is hot, though of course the sun here is not as we have it. But the air is heavy,—what Mrs. Pipkin calls muggy. I was thinking if I were to go somewhere for a week, it would do me good. Where had I better go?" Paul suggested Brighton. "That is full of people; is it not?—a fashionable place?"
"Not at this time of the year."
"But it is a big place. I want some little place that would be pretty. You could take me down; could you not? Not very far, you know;—not that any place can be very far from here." Paul, in his John Bull displeasure, suggested Penzance, telling her, untruly, that it would take twenty-four hours. "Not Penzance then, which I know is your very Ultima Thule;—not Penzance, nor yet Orkney. Is there no other place,—except Southend?"