"I came alone," said she, over her shoulder.
"You would rather I did not come with you?"
At first I thought she would not answer that, but suddenly she whipped round, showing me the anger in her eyes once more.
"I shall ask God to-night," she said, "that I shall never see you again."
Against my will that made me smile. She would ask God! Indeed, she was just one of those little creatures who in their loves or hatreds would ask a Deity to help them.
I sat down then by the path's edge. At my side sat Dandy, and together—just as once we had looked after the little nursery maid—we watched Clarissa out of sight. When at last she turned the corner and disappeared, I leant forward, my elbows on my knees, staring at the sea. It was not the sea that filled my eyes. All that I beheld was a picture of Clarissa on her knees, asking God that she should never see me again.
CHAPTER XVIII
It must be by the light of a great confidence in himself that a man rejoices in fatalism. As I walked along the cliffs that morning to meet Clarissa, the beating of my heart was high. For that one hour I had believed in Fate, in the imperishable reason in all things. But as I saw her pass round the distant corner and vanish out of sight, the whole order of the world was plunged in chaos. I began to ask myself what freak of circumstance had sent me out upon such an errand of folly.
By the very movement of her body, the very temper of her step, as I watched her walking back to Ballysheen, I knew that I had awakened in her a living despot of determination.
Women are like that. Nothing will alter them. It proves to me conclusively how little I know of their nature when I brought reason and a spirit of logic along with me to urge Clarissa to the sacrifice of her romance. For it is not with women that they are unreasonable. To be reasonable, one must know what reason is. Now I would swear that, as a sex, they do not know the first meaning of the word. Their intelligence is of another, perhaps a higher, order altogether. Reason, with a woman, only aggravates her to determination. Intuition, on the other hand, with a man, aggravates him to obstinacy. That is why I think—and maybe I am wrong—that the order of a woman's intelligence is higher than that of a man's. Determination is the better part of obstinacy.