"So you think you are moderate in your demands," he said to her. "You are a most amusing young woman. You are so perfectly unconscious how exacting you really are. For, after all, what is it you want? You want to have that wonderful brain of yours restored, so that you may begin to teach, and, perhaps, write a book. Well, to repeat my former words: you are still at phase one, and you are longing to be strong enough to fulfil your ambitions and write a book. When you arrive at phase four, you will be quite content to dust one of your uncle's books instead: far more useful work and far more worthy of encouragement. If every one who wrote books now would be satisfied to dust books already written, what a regenerated world it would become!"
She laughed good-temperedly. His remarks did not vex her; or, at least, she showed no vexation. He seemed to have constituted himself as her critic, and she made no objections. She had given him little bits of stray confidence about herself, and she received everything he had to say with that kind of forbearance which chivalry bids us show to the weak and ailing. She made allowances for him; but she did more than that for him: she did not let him see that she made allowances. Moreover, she recognized amidst all his roughness a certain kind of sympathy which she could not resent, because it was not aggressive. For to some natures the expression of sympathy is an irritation; to be sympathized with means to be pitied, and to be pitied means to be looked down upon. She was sorry for him, but she would not have told him so for worlds; he would have shrunk from pity as much as she did. And yet the sympathy which she thought she did not want for herself, she was silently giving to those around her, like herself, thwarted, each in a different way perhaps, still thwarted all the same.
She found more than once that she was learning to measure people by a standard different from her former one; not by what they had done or been, but by what they had suffered. But such a change as this does not come suddenly, though, in a place like Petershof, it comes quickly, almost unconsciously.
She became immensely interested in some of the guests; and there were curious types in the Kurhaus. The foreigners attracted her chiefly; a little Parisian danseuse, none too quiet in her manner, won Bernardine's fancy.
"I so want to get better, chérie," she said to Bernardine. "Life is so bright. Death: ah, how the very thought makes one shiver! That horrid doctor says I must not skate; it is not wise. When was I wise? Wise people don't enjoy themselves. And I have enjoyed myself, and will still."
"How can you go about with that little danseuse?" the Disagreeable Man said to Bernardine one day. "Do you know who she is?"
"Yes," said Bernardine; "she is the lady who thinks you must be a very ill-bred person because you stalk into meals, with your hands in your pockets. She wondered how I could bring myself to speak to you."
"I dare say many people wonder at that," said Robert Allitsen rather peevishly.
"Oh no," replied Bernardine; "they wonder that you talk to me. They think I must either be very clever or else very disagreeable."
"I should not call you clever," said Robert Allitsen grimly.