“Disappointed in what?—the sunrise, or the breakfast?”
“I pay you the compliment of supposing that such material pleasures as food do not interest you,” he returned; “nevertheless, you will find the fare sufficient. The air in the early morning is chilly, so dress warmly.”
With which advice he closed the conversation as resolutely as a man who, talking over a telephone, shuts off communication by replacing the receiver. He bent over his plate and went on eating as though he had forgotten entirely the girl’s existence. He finished his breakfast before she did and got up and went out by the window.
Book One—Chapter Seven.
During the twenty-two unenlivening and, latterly, busy years of her life Esmé Lester had never been in love, had not known the excitement which many girls of her age enjoy of possessing a lover. She was not a sentimental young woman, and she had not had much time in which to indulge in these distractions. The woman who earns her livelihood has her mind occupied with graver matters generally. Love, if it succeed in penetrating her preoccupation, takes her usually unaware and remains sometimes unsuspected for quite an appreciable while.
It was possibly not love which in the early stages of their acquaintance aroused her interest in Hallam. Mainly her feeling for him was a mixture of womanly compassion and of repugnance so intense that at times it shouldered pity into the background, and left her chilled with disgust for his weakness and bitterly ashamed for him.
Her acquaintance with Hallam developed surprisingly. The occasion of their walk to view the sunrise advanced it to a stage of easy intimacy. The tentacles of friendship reached out and struck deep into the natures of both. The man accepted rather than welcomed the change in their relations. He deplored, despite its agreeableness, the growing intimacy as something dangerous to his peace, something which might not be pursued and developed beyond a certain point, which, because of its limitation, was disturbing and undesirable. No man cares to set a boundary line to his intercourse with a woman who attracts him; immediately with the appearance of the barrier the desire to surmount it is bred.
The state of Hallam’s mind was that of paralysed initiative. He was incapable of making any sustained effort. He drifted into this friendship as he drifted into less desirable practices. Hereditary tendencies and inclination both led him to follow his present mode of life; nor had it seemed to him in any degree shameful until this girl stepped suddenly across his path and altered his view of things. But her influence was not yet sufficiently strong to cause him more than a passing regret for the waste he was making of life. His life was his own affair; it was no one’s business how he elected to use it.