How much nobler men had been in a womanless world! Some of them had had to become womanless before they could be noble. Pollock plunging to his death from the clouds, like an eagle struck by a thunderbolt! Lord Dawn with the smile of calm remembrance on his lips, purged of all his fruitless sex-contentions, lying white and quiet beneath the crack and spatter of exploding shells! Braithwaite, the ex-valet, who had proved himself an aristocrat in courage! And he himself, thinking only of duty, with every jealous ambition laid aside!
And now—— The mate of the eagle was a trifler with peacocks and vultures. The man whose face had been molded by his last thought into an expression of serene faithfulness, was recalled only as one who had lived envenomed by disloyalty. Braithwaite, the aristocrat in courage, was now distinguished for his cowardice; he himself was at one and the same time Braithwaite's rival and grudging critic. The Philistines be upon thee, Samson! And he awoke out of his sleep and said, I will go out as at other times and shake myself——Asleep! He felt that he, too, had been asleep. All the men who had been giants in the past five years were either dead or sleeping. And this sudden transformation was the work of women, because men had come back to walk and rest with them in the soft, desired places. The little feminine hands had stripped them of their charity, had taken away their valor and had concealed liers-in-wait in the chamber of their affections.
So his thoughts ran on, amplifying, magnifying, exaggerating the theme of the debilitating effects of women. But from all his accusations he exempted Terry. She was the Joan of Arc of his imagination, who rode on unvanquished across life's battlefields, inspiring to heroism with her shining purity. And he made one other exception—Lady Dawn. It was the Lady Dawn of the portrait he exempted, not the Lady Dawn who had mocked him in passing with her steady stone-gray eyes. In a strange way he discriminated between the portrait and the living woman. The portrait was almost his friend; the
living woman was a stranger. The woman in the portrait was after his own heart; she had never been known to cry. "Do it harder; I can bear more than that." He thrilled to the pride of her defiance.
Then he pulled himself up with a start. Again he was thinking about her. Yes, and though he might discriminate between the portrait and the living woman, it was the living woman's eyes that gleamed in the blackness of his mind. There was truth in what Maisie had said, that were he as much in love with Terry as he professed all other women, however beautiful, except the one woman, should be hanks of hair and bags of bones. He consoled himself by arguing that that was precisely what he had been trying to prove them by his sweeping applications of the conduct of Delilah.
Whichever way he viewed his situation, things were in a pretty fair muddle—a muddle which annoyed him because it was so unmerited. He was pledged to Terry, while she held herself unpledged. He was committed to help Maisie—a distinctly unwise little lady for any bachelor to help. As a third party to his problem, Lady Dawn intruded herself—though why she should, he wasn't certain. He would have to see her, however much Maisie dissuaded; it was right that she should know about her husband. Yet was that the entire reason why he was so keen to see her? He assured himself very earnestly that it was, and dismissed her from his mind.
For the rest of the journey home he conscien
tiously narrowed his imaginings to thoughts of Terry.