Lewis obeyed and answered. “But is that quite fair? Most houses have more than one person living in ’em. Green Doors has. If you’re going to do portraiture in your architecting, I should think it would have to be composite portraiture.”
“Possibly, with some houses. But not Green Doors. It’s Clare who colors everything there, and a lucky thing for the others! Have you ever known such—such simplicity and utter goodness? Isn’t she wonderful! Aren’t you grateful that I have brought you together? Isn’t just knowing her worth all the trouble you’ve taken with Petra? I bet it is.”
“What do you mean, trouble with Petra? It’s Miss Frazier who had to take trouble with Petra just at first, perhaps. But now she’s invaluable to us both, let me tell you. She has a positive flair for the work.”
“Really! I didn’t realize that. Have you told Clare? She thinks it’s really a kind of charity on your part, keeping Petra occupied. Petra herself says you are patience itself and that she is always doing something wrong.”
“That’s nonsense. Or else a form of perverted modesty. Miss Frazier and I would be lost without her now.”
Dick would repeat this to Petra’s stepmother, Lewis hoped. It was something at last, though almost infinitesimal, of course, that he could do for Petra, who asked and wanted nothing of him really.
Then Dick fell mercifully silent, occupying himself by scrawling letters in the sand at the base of the rock. Lewis began counting the fir-tree tops which pricked the fog with their pointed spires at irregular intervals down the hill; for Lewis had acquired a habit, when Petra was called to mind suddenly, as she had been just now, or came without being called, as she did all too often, God knew, of concentrating on the first other thing that came to hand. Now he counted tree tops. And though he was smoking far too much—he knew—but to whom could it matter!—he took out his cigarette case.
“Clare wanted me to talk to you down here,” Dick said suddenly. “Tell you things. But I rather suspect you know them already. You do, don’t you?”
“What she means to you?” Lewis asked. He was sorry Dick had decided to plunge into intimate confidences exactly at this point. If he would only wait till the fog lifted—till the seascape was diamond clear. If a northwester would only blow! If the weather shifted, Lewis might be able to listen patiently (which was all Dick wanted, of course) to his “If-you-know-what-I-means,” and “Do-you-sees.” But he was in for it now. Dick had Lewis cornered just as, in his utter overworked weariness, he felt the fog had him cornered.
“Yes, what Clare means to me and what I mean to her,” Dick was saying. “I imagine you saw how I felt about her almost before I saw myself. That day when I came to your office! And all during the summer it has gone on getting—well, more and more so. But it isn’t Clare’s fault. She saw things as they were even before I did and she warned me. She wanted me to go away, for my own good. She was sane and beautiful about it. Why, she talked in as detached and clear a way as you could have talked yourself, Lewis. And all the time—which makes her detachment so wonderful—she herself was involved in it all, do you see! I don’t mean that she—that she feels exactly the way I do. She wouldn’t. She isn’t like that, anyway. She’s too—unphysical. But our friendship means everything to her, all the same. She says that passionate friendship is actually more involving than passionate love. Because it absorbs and colors the imagination, you see. If we were lovers, she says—as the world understands the phrase, you know—why, we mightn’t mean nearly so much to each other as we do with things as they are with us. But she was ready to sacrifice this passionate friendship for my sake. She was afraid I might suffer too much, if it continued. You mustn’t think I am crazily conceited, Lewis, when I tell you that not seeing me any more would have meant sacrifice to Clare. I don’t understand myself why she cares for me as she does. The miracle of her caring fills me with the deepest humility. But she does care. Our being together so much means everything to her, as it does to me, only in a different way. And she was ready to give it up! She said that, quite aside from the suffering it might bring me, there was always the chance that my caring so much for her might keep me from falling in love with some girl I could marry, do you see. And she talked it all out with me—quietly, bravely. But I wanted to stay, of course,—just so long as I was sure it was not hurting her, or making her unhappy. Do you understand?”