“Why, yes,” he answered brightly. “This is the land of friendships, you know.”
“I am glad to hear it is the land of something beautiful,” she said bitterly.
“Does it frown to you so very much?” he asked kindly.
“Yes,” she answered almost fiercely. “Terribly.”
“But if we have a beautiful spring, you will think differently of it,” he said.
“No, no,” she replied, standing still for the moment; “nothing could make me like it. It isn’t only the scenery—it’s everything: the isolation, the fearful distance from home, the absence of stimulus. One doesn’t realise this at home. If one only realised it, one would not come. Nothing would make one come,” she continued excitedly, “neither love nor friendship, nor duty nor regret; and as for ambition to carve out a new career for oneself—good heavens! if I were a man, I would rather starve in my old career.”
Her thoughts, till now locked in her heart, were leaping into freedom.
“Oh,” she said, “if you only knew what a relief it is to me to speak out to some one. I have been suffocated these last days, and every hour it has been getting worse. I’ve written letters—oh, yes, I’ve written letters and torn them up in despair. The distance is so great, that it paralyses one. You can’t send a chronicle of misery six thousand miles. It’s just absurd mockery to do it. It’s only a caricature of your depression. It helps you a little to write it, and then you must tear it up at once, and that is all the comfort you will have out of it. Oh, it is better than nothing: anything is better than nothing, when you have to keep silent, and when some one near you is watching constantly for your look of approval and waiting for your word of approbation, and you cannot give either. You are simply forced to be silent. But when you are able to speak out your real thoughts to a human being, then you breathe again, as I’m breathing now.”
She paused, and Ben was silent too. He did not know what to say.
“But why, why do people come here?” she continued; “what do they find here to like? What do they get in exchange for all they’ve lost? Why, in the name of heaven, did Robert settle in such a place?—why did you choose to come here? Are you going to stay here all your lives? Tell me what it all means. Tell me frankly and honestly whether you care for your life here, and whether you would not throw it up to-morrow if you could.”