"Show me anyone who has done anything worth while," continued Narcisse, "and I'll show you a man or a woman whose heart has been broken—and mended—made strong.... It isn't always love that does the breaking. In fact, it's usually something else—especially with men. In my case it happened to be love."
Neva's fingers had ceased to play with the brushes. Her hands rested upon the edge of the drawer lightly, yet their expression was somehow tense. Her eyes were gazing into—Narcisse wondered what vision was hypnotizing them.
"It was ten years ago—when I was studying in Paris. I can see how he might not be attractive to some women, but he was to me." Narcisse laughed slightly. "I don't know what might have happened, if he hadn't been drawn away by a little Roumanian singer, like an orchid waving in a perfumed breeze. All Paris was quite mad about her, and Boris got her. She thought she got him; but he survived, while she— When she made her way back to Paris, she found it perfectly calm."
"And you still care for him?" said Neva gently.
Narcisse laughed healthily. "I mended my heart, accepted my lesson.... Isn't it queer, how differently one looks at a person one has cared for, after one is cured?"
"I don't know," said Neva, in a slow, constrained way. "I've never had the experience."
After a silence Narcisse went on, "I've no objection to your repeating to him what I've said. It was a mere reminiscence, not at all a confession."
Neva shook her head. "That would bring up a subject a woman should avoid with men. If it is never opened, it remains closed; if it's ever opened, it can't be shut again."
Narcisse was struck by the penetration of this, and proceeded to reëxamine Neva more thoroughly. Nothing is more neglected than the revision from time to time of our opinions of those about us. Though character is as mobile as every other quantity in this whirling kaleidoscope of a universe, we make up our minds about our acquaintances and friends once for all, and refuse to change unless forced by some cataclysm. As their talk unfolded the Neva beneath the surface, it soon appeared to Narcisse that either she or Neva had become radically different since their intimacy of twelve years before. "Probably both of us," she decided. "I've learned to read character better, and she has more character to read. I remember, I used to think she was one of those who would develop late—even for a woman."
"It was stupid of me," she said to Neva, "but I've been assuming you are just as you were. Now it dawns on me that you are as new to me as if you were an entire stranger. You are different—outside and inside."