"Yes, I am leaving Westmore—and I doubt whether I shall ever return to it." Her color had risen; though she smiled, a little of the bitterness she felt edged her words.
"I imagine it must be desolate for you here—but you, out of this setting—I can't conceive of it exactly." Then it occurred to Baird what this move of hers would mean to them both; a continued intimacy, certainly. The vague motives that had brought him to her prompted the quick addition: "We'll meet in Paris then, Judith—we'll see it together."
Though undefined, there was a suggestion both in his words and his manner that affected Judith curiously, urging her to a sudden defiant candor. What had her restrained, conventional life won for her? Nothing more than expressions of gallant admiration; never the vital gripping thing. "My setting!" she said scornfully. "A woman reared as I have been has no more freedom of will than a walled-in prisoner! She's a perfect slave, bound to the past and handed over hand-tied into the future. From now on, I'm going to live. I am going to know countries, and nations, and women and men—more as a man knows them. I'm going to think as I please and live as I please. Not even the past is going to dictate my future!" She had flung out her resolve, body tense and head high.
Baird studied her; she had both surprised and amused him. Though not widely experienced, he had met this sort of revolt degenerated into mere free-living. Baird considered himself broad-minded, but he had not passed beyond the conception that a woman's assertion of free thought and action invariably meant that she was considering—as he would have expressed it to himself—"going on the loose."
But Judith Westmore, with her monumental pride and her immense self-respect and her narrowly conventional rearing, talking of becoming a free-lance! She didn't know what she was talking about; she could no more do it than she could fly. She would see Paris—the world and its peoples, for that matter—and "men," as conventionally as her class and kind always saw them. She was simply worn into exasperation by Westmore troubles—and her love for him. The thing was laughable—and a little sad.
It was Baird's very genuine admiration and liking for Judith that was responsible for this conclusion. To almost any other attractive woman who had tempted his present uncertain mood, he would have answered, and meaningly, "Well, why not?" But to Judith he said kindly and amusedly, "I don't wonder you want to throw all this off and get out into breathing space. It'll do you good to get a change. I don't believe you'll paint Paris a vivid red, though, Judith, even if I tried to help you do it."
It was evident that he had not taken her seriously, and Judith decided that it was as well that he had not done so; she had said much more than she had intended to say. The future was before them, and he would discover soon enough that she was in deadly earnest. He would find a changed woman when they met in Paris.
She regained her usual bright manner. "I'm glad you're not too shocked to continue our acquaintance. I hope you'll come to see me in Paris, and then you can tell me what you think of my new way of life."
Baird smiled. "Of course I'll come."
She was very beautiful as she stood there, head high and with the color of defiance still warming her cheeks. The ugly ache in Baird reminded him that, at a few words from him, her structure of independence would crumble. She would marry him to-morrow if he asked her, and give him an immense devotion. His flush deepened into a dull red.