"I suppose that's it—partly. A brook couldn't hide very much—and most people are like brooks or ponds. The ones that seem to have depth seem so simply because the water's muddy."
She looked admiringly at him; and her admiration of his originality and insight did not lessen when he added, "At least, so a friend of mine used to say." He returned to the subject. "Then—I may stay?"
Her face brightened. In her eyes as they looked at a smile slowly dawned. Quickly all her features were responding, especially that wide, expressive fascinating mouth. "I hope you will. But—no more dreariness!"
"I hate gloom as much as you do." He glanced round the room—at the harmonies of woodwork and walls and furnishing, with here and there bright flowers always in the restraint of those of gentle hue. "As much as you do," repeated he. "And that's saying a great deal. How do you manage it!—house and garden, always gay yet never gaudy—and such variety! Is there no end to your variety?"
"Oh, one's a new person every day, isn't one?—and different."
"You certainly are. But no one else I ever saw." He colored furiously at his finding himself, without intending it, upon the forbidden ground. She had turned away, and was leaving the room—the safest course, since it enabled her to hide her pleasure in the compliment that peculiarly appealed to her, and also seemed to give him a sufficient yet not harsh rebuke.
Her aversion to restraint was perhaps stronger than is the average woman's—certainly had more courage. She had been too thoroughly trained in the conventionalities not to have the familiar timidity as to action, so strong in all conventionally bred people, so dominant over women. But the "unhand-me" spirit of her time was finding outlet in thought and feeling. Reflecting much in her aloneness, she had reached many audacious conclusions about life and the true meaning of its comedy drama—that meaning so different from what we pretend, from what usually passes as truth in history, philosophy, and literature, based as they are upon man's cheap hankering for idealistic strut. The audacities of thought that occasionally showed at her surface in speech or commentary of smiling eyes and lips were conventional in comparison with whole schools of deep-swimming ideas and fancies that kept hours of aloneness from being hours of loneliness. Physically, her passion for freedom showed itself in her dislike of tight or stuffy garments. She could pass her hand round her waist inside her closest-fitting corset. Her liking for few clothes and for as little yoke and sleeves as custom allowed came not from the thought for the other sex that often explains this taste, but from aversion to restraint.
As usual, the first thing she did that night, when she was alone in her rooms, was to rid herself of all her clothing and put on the thinnest of thin white nightgowns, almost sleeveless, and cut out at the neck. She thrust her feet into bedroom slippers, braided her long hair with its strands of red almost brown, with its strands of brown almost gold. She turned out the light, threw open all the long shutters screening her windows, to let her bedroom fill with warm, perfumed freshness from lake and gardens. She stepped out on the balcony to take the breathing exercises that kept her body straight, her chest high, her bosom firm as a girl's, and her form slim and supple. The fireflies were floating and darting in the creepers and the near-hanging boughs. The slight agitations of the air stole among the folds of her gown and over her neck and arms like charmed fingers. There was no moon; but she did not miss it in the dim splendor of the thronging stars.
"Aren't you about ready to come in?"
She startled, suppressed a scream. She turned. Richard was standing in the window. Her blood which had rushed to her heart surged out again and into her brain in an angry wave. She hated to be taken by surprise. It was on the tip of her tongue to cry furiously, "I detest being spied upon." But she had resolved soon after Winchie was born never to speak angrily to him, never to let him hear her speak angrily. The habit restrained her now, as it had scores of times. Instead, she said: "Why, how did you get in? I'm sure I locked my door."