Mrs. Brancepeth looked at her with a wonderful tenderness and pity. She had often noticed how completely she was in the clutch of her temperament, how the mood of the moment completely blotted out all other landmarks and guiding-posts which experience from without and her own character from within might have been supposed to be of some directing value in perplexities. But it was not so with her; in such things she was a child, ruled by the impulse—not led by the reason, nor steered by any formed character. With her the present moment so blotted out the past that all precedents, all warnings, all points which ninety-nine grown-up people out of a hundred have to help their decisions, were with her simply non-existent. If the present moment was pleasant, she abandoned herself to childish delight; if perplexing, she was the prey of in-soluble doubts. She had a passion for analysis, but her analysis, brilliant as it often was, was as fruitless as the Japanese cherry. It was the process of thought which she loved to dissect, and having dissected it, she threw it away. All this Mrs. Brancepeth saw—saw, too, that Sybil's was a nature to which it was no use to preach principles; the practical dealing with the concrete instance was all that could help her.
'Tell me more about Mr. Bilton,' she said.
'He is dominating,' said Sybil. 'I was greatly attracted by him. Then he did something disgusting, or so I thought it, and I was disillusioned. I even began to dislike him. But he has force, and it will need force on my part to fight him. What will the result be? I shall have less force to fight Charlie's microbes for him.'
'Yes, that is what you are doing,' said Mrs. Brancepeth softly.
'And even here, even when I see most clearly how much better he is getting, I ask myself whether I am doing wisely or not,' continued Sybil. 'What will the end be? Is he filled with certain hopes which I cannot say will ever be realized? And what if he is disappointed of them?'
There was no reply, and after a minute she went on.
'Mr. Bilton will arrive in two days,' she said; 'he will come to this hotel. It is impossible for me to cut him, not to recognise him. He is quite extraordinarily like Charlie, by the way. I must speak to him when he speaks to me. I must behave decently. And I know—oh, how well I know it!—he will interest me again. I shall be forced to be interested. There is that about him—some force, some relentless sort of machinery that goes grinding on, pulverizing what gets in its way.'
Mrs. Brancepeth rose.
'Now, dear, be quiet,' she said. 'You are working yourself up about it. Don't do that. Don't whip up your imagination on the subject. You take things too vividly.' Sybil smiled rather hopelessly.
'That does not help matters,' she said; 'some people take them not vividly enough. I am myself, you are yourself; the broad lines of each of us are inexorably laid down for us. All we can do is not to make a very shocking mess of them. We are all unsatisfactory. No, I don't think you are; you are very nice and restful. Now, what am I to do—not about Bilton, I mean, but now this minute. That is always so important.'