XIV. FRESH AIR IN A GREENHOUSE
At five the next day I rang the Ellerslys' bell, was taken through the drawing-room into that same library. The curtains over the double doorway between the two rooms were almost drawn. She presently entered from the hall. I admired the picture she made in the doorway—her big hat, her embroidered dress of white cloth, and that small, sweet, cold face of hers. And as I looked, I knew that nothing, nothing—no, not even her wish, her command—could stop me from trying to make her my own. That resolve must have shown in my face—it or the passion that inspired it—for she paused and paled.
“What is it?” I asked. “Are you afraid of me?”
She came forward proudly, a fine scorn in her eyes. “No,” she said. “But if you knew, you might be afraid of me.”
“I am,” I confessed. “I am afraid of you because you inspire in me a feeling that is beyond my control. I've committed many follies in my life—I have moods in which it amuses me to defy fate. But those follies have always been of my own willing. You”—I laughed—“you are a folly for me. But one that compels me.”
She smiled—not discouragingly—and seated herself on a tiny sofa in the corner, a curiously impregnable intrenchment, as I noted—for my impulse was to carry her by storm. I was astonished at my own audacity; I was wondering where my fear of her had gone, my awe of her superior fineness and breeding. “Mama will be down in a few minutes,” she said.
“I didn't come to see your mother,” replied I. “I came to see you.”
She flushed, then froze—and I thought I had once more “got upon” her nerves with my rude directness. How eagerly sensitive our nerves are to bad impressions of one we don't like, and how coarsely insensible to bad impressions of one we do like!
“I see I've offended again, as usual,” said I. “You attach so much importance to petty little dancing-master tricks and caperings. You live—always have lived—in an artificial atmosphere. Real things act on you like fresh air on a hothouse flower.”