She sat there, thinking of the charming women he must see every day, and who must of course all love him. She was sure that he knew dozens of girls prettier, more accomplished, a hundred times more fascinating than herself. And yet felt sure that if she had a proper chance, she could win him, felt that there was some peculiar quality in her which was in no other living woman.
The afternoon dragged by in a weary and painful waking dream. She hurried through the preparations for dinner, resentful of anything that distracted her long reveries. Nothing else held the slightest interest for her. If she could get him back? If she would ever see him again? If the beneficent Fate which had brought him to her would still direct the thing, would help her once again?
They sat at the table, they talked, their usual constrained and formal talk. Then Miss Amy went out and her brother returned to his room and his great work—his romance of the time of Nero.
Rosaleen really admired it, without any particular interest in it. And she felt a very feminine satisfaction that the man in the house had found for himself an occupation which kept him quiet, and out of the way. Every evening for years he had shut himself into his room directly after dinner, to write. He had begun this romance when he had first come to the city, but he did not progress rapidly, for he had often to interrupt its course while he studied. His studying consisted in reading “Quo Vadis” and “Ben Hur” and dozens and dozens of other novels of the same sort, and making diagrams of their plots, according to a scheme he had adopted from his well-read manual—“The Road to Authorship.” On large sheets of paper he drew a wavering curve upward to the Climax, then down, then perhaps up again two or three times, for all the little anti-climaxes. Each character had its own wavering line, leading up and down, crossing or running parallel to the “main theme.” In a big exercise book he kept an index of the characters he had most admired in all these novels, with little sketches of their histories, traits, etc.
He now felt altogether familiar with that epoch. He knew just the proper set of characters for the scene, a Christian slave girl, a gigantic, faithful and muscular porter, a humourous pariah, and so on, and all the unfortunate crew of pious and humble folk predestined from the first chapter for martyrdom. A romantic work, for Mr. Humbert was romantic, in a masculine way, you must know, about facts, not about people.
He enjoyed this literary work with immeasurable relish. It completely distracted his mind from his business, from his home, from Life. He didn’t care much for Life. It was too rough, too complicated, too large. He was glad also to forget about his sister, whom he dreaded, and Rosaleen, who worried him by her helplessness. She was a good, kind girl, but he hadn’t much of an opinion of her. Uninteresting.... Her only hope lay in marrying a decent, respectable man who would look after her, and her chance of finding and securing such a man seemed to Mr. Humbert very remote.
He heard her stirring about in the kitchen, alone in there, washing the dinner things. He shook his venerable head.
“Poor Rosaleen!” he said, with a sigh.
II
Rosaleen had, in her long exile, cultivated a demeanour, an expression which was quite unfathomable by her housemates. She had a sort of meek and lowly grace, so much the air of the grateful child rescued from poverty, that it never occurred to them to regard her as anything but this regulation type. Miss Amy had seen others of the same sort in the course of her charitable labours. Of course, Rosaleen was grateful, or, as Miss Amy preferred to put it, appreciative; how could she logically be anything else? Miss Amy was not aware that in Rosaleen there was no logic, no reason, and it must be admitted, very little justice. She was completely composed of feeling. She had a perpetual resentment against the Humberts which no sense of obligation could assuage. She passionately preferred her frequently intoxicated and always avaricious mother; although Miss Amy was undeniably a good woman and her mother was no more and no less than a human being. Self-interest was absolutely lacking in Rosaleen. She cared not a whit what you did for her, or could do for her. She had an inexhaustible fund of devotion, of intense and absurd affection, but it was not to be bought, it was not even to be won. She had pity, mercy, compassion beyond measure, but it went only by favour.