Two endless streams of people moved, particolored, in opposite directions along the narrow street. The high stone buildings were tinged with the red of the low sunshine. Hundreds of windows, far up, catching the glare, twinkled with the harsh fixity of gorgon's eyes. Beyond everything floated the pale brilliant September sky overcast by the broad rays which stretched upward from the invisible sun.
Julia, returning from the laboratory, hesitated at a crowded corner and found Dudley beside her.
"This is pleasant, Julia. I've been wanting to see you and Laurence Farley. I'm sailing for Europe next week, and I should have been very much disappointed if I had been obliged to go off without meeting you again." He tried to speak easily while he looked at her with an expression of reproach. Julia smiled and held out her hand. There was a defensive light in her eyes which he interpreted as a symptom of dislike. He wanted to convince himself that every one, even she, was completely alienated from him. All that fed his pain strengthened his vacillating egotism.
Julia noted the familiar details of his appearance: his short arms in the sleeves of a perfectly fitting coat; the plump hairy white hand which reached to hers a trifle unsteadily; his short well-made little body that he held absurdly erect; the wide felt hat that he tried to wear carelessly, which, in consequence, was slightly to one side on the back of his head and showed his dark curls; the childishly fresh color which glowed through the beard in his carefully shaven cheeks; his small full mouth that sulked in repose but when he smiled displayed exaggeratedly all of his little even teeth; his prettily modeled, womanish nose; the silky reddish mustache on his short lip; and his soft, ingratiating, long-lashed eyes. Everything in his appearance disarmed her resentment of him. Yet she knew that if she expressed anything of her state of mind he would take advantage of her vulnerability. She was prepared to see his gaze harden toward her and his demeanor, puerile now, become ruthless and commanding. She could not analyze the thing in herself that made her so helpless before him. She was able, she thought, to observe him coldly. She withdrew her hand from his and said, "So you are going away again? I am glad for your sake. I know how America must irk you. Even from my viewpoint I can see that it is the last country for an artist." At the same moment her heart contracted and she told herself that there was something false and monstrous in Dudley which suppressed her natural impulse to be frank in stating what she felt for him.
Dudley walked beside her. She wants me to go away! He insisted on believing this. To know that she continued to suffer, however, comforted him as much now as it had in the past. He sensed that she had, in some remote way, remained subject to him. Because of this she was dear. When he remembered that, but for this accidental meeting, he would not have communicated his departure to her he was momentarily panic-stricken. He no longer wished to detach himself from her.
"Tell me about your work. What are you doing now?"
He took her arm. "I can't talk about my work, Julia. Something goes out of me that ought to go into the work when I talk about it too much. That's my struggle—my fight. It's terrifying at times. I know all the hounds are baying at my heels. When I go abroad this time I am going to avoid Paris. I know dozens of cities. Paris is the only one which is a work of art. That's why I am going to keep away. I am through with the finality of that kind of art. I am going abroad to feel how much of an American I am. That's why I hate it so. It's in me—a part of me. I can't escape it. I must express it. That is my salvation—in belonging to America." It was almost irresistible to tell her some of the conclusions he had arrived at to comfort himself, but he knew that Julia never approached a subject from a cosmic angle. She made him feel small and unhappy and full of a homesickness for understanding. In her very crudity she was the life he had to face. "I want to talk to you about yourself, Julia. There are clouds of misunderstanding between us. We mustn't leave things like this." He pressed her arm against his side.
She was ashamed before a stout woman who was passing who showed, by the expression of dull attention in her eyes, that she had overheard his remark. In this atmosphere of public intimacy Julia felt grotesque. "I can't talk about myself, Dudley. Don't ask me. You've put me out of your life. Why should you be interested?"
He was conscious of the stiffening of her body as she walked beside him and observed the forced immobility of her face. Emerging from the self-loathing which was an undercurrent to his vanity, he was grateful to her for allowing him to hurt her. He began to wonder if he were not, at this instant, realizing for the first time the significance of his relationship to her—not its significance in her life, but its significance in his own. He admitted to himself the cruelty of his feeling for her. He wanted to torture her, to annihilate her even. It pleased him to discover in himself enormous capacities for all things that, to the timid-minded, constitute sin. He must embrace life without moral limitations. "Julia, my dear—you must not misunderstand my feeling for you. I want you—want you even physically—as much as I ever did." His voice shook a little. "It is only because I understand now that I must refuse myself much. I have found just this last month a marvelous spiritual rest which makes living deeply more acceptable."
Julia had never felt more contemptuous of him. "What I have to say would only convince you of my limitations."