“To be sure—it wouldn’t matter at all,” he admitted. “Do go on.”
“If it weren’t that my knowing you—this way—would always seem unreal—not at all a part of life—I’d not dare come. Now, don’t misunderstand. That doesn’t mean I’m falling in love with you—at least, I don’t think it does.” Dreamily—“No, I don’t think so.”
“Depressing,” said he, with an awkward attempt at humor. He did not like these frank personalities from his model—these alarming skirtings of the subject he wished to discuss or consider with no woman. It was interesting, refreshingly interesting, this unheard-of, direct way of dealing with a matter invariably ignored by an unmarried, marriageable girl—that is, so far as his experience went, it was ignored—but, perhaps, in the America growing up during his absence—yes, this interesting audacity was disquieting.
“No—I’ve thought it out carefully, Chang,” pursued she. “I’m not afraid of falling in love with you. It’s simply that what you are—what you stand for—appeals to my other self—the self I’m soon going to wrap in a shroud and lay in a grave—forever.... Coming here is a kind of dissipation for me. But I shan’t lose control of myself.” She nodded positively, and there was a shrewd flash in her eyes.
“I’ll back you up,” said he. “So you needn’t worry. Falling in love is entirely out of my line.”
He saw that she had no more belief in this than the next woman would have had. For, little though he knew about women—the realities as to women, the intricacies of women—he had not failed to learn that every young or youngish woman regards herself as an expert at compelling men to love, as a certain victor whenever she cares to exert herself to win. “You have your career, I mine,” he went on. “They have nothing in common. So we needn’t waste time worrying about impossibilities.”
“That’s true,” exclaimed she with enthusiasm.
He changed the subject to safer things, acting as if the whole matter of their relations were settled. But, in reality, he was profoundly disturbed. If the scheme of his picture had not taken such firm hold upon him—the hold that compels an artist, in face of any debt to consequences, however heavy—he would have contrived to rid himself of her that day for good and all. He had had too many adventures not to know the dangers filling the woodland in the springtime for a young man and a young woman with no one to interrupt. He did not like his own interest in her; he was little reassured by her explanations as to her interest in him, though he told himself he must be careful not to judge American girls by foreign standards. But the picture must be made, and she was indispensable.
The bright weather held for several days. Every morning artist and model met near the cascade and worked and talked alternately until toward lunch time. She came earlier and earlier, until it was hardly six when her canoe shot round the bend which divided off that end of the lake into a little bay. He was always there before her. “Do you spend the night here?” she asked.