Always these wonders were there, and always they assumed fresh guises, revealed themselves in new and surprising aspects with the varying seasons and the shifting light. It was good to sit out on the stoep in the warm still dusk and enjoy these things together in an intimate and undisturbed solitude. They needed nothing else for the present, desired no companionship but each other’s. Hallam was no less misanthropic than before his marriage; but his life was happier and full of interest. He was passionately in love; and his passion poured itself out in daily worship of this woman who gave him a full return, whose passion answered to his, equalled his in everything save its absorbed concentration on the individual to the exclusion of every other interest in life. To shut out the world from her thoughts entirely, as Hallam did, was not possible to Esmé. She loved life and her fellow-beings. Because she loved Paul better than all the world, with a love which was an emotion apart and different in quality from anything she had ever known before, she could not close her heart to every outside interest. She was glad always to be with him, glad during the first months in their own home to have him to herself with no interruptions from the world beyond their walls. But she did not desire to lead that shut in life always. She wanted to go about among people, and to have him go with her; and she made this clear to him after a while to his no inconsiderable dismay.
People called on her, and she returned their calls—alone; Hallam refused definitely to have any share in that. She waived the point. So many men evaded this social duty that it did not seem to her of great importance. But when dinner and other invitations began to arrive, and he as flatly declined to accept them, she felt disappointed and showed it. She wanted to take part in these things, and his objection made her participation impossible.
“Why should you want to go?” he asked, with passionate resentment in his tones, on an occasion when she pressed him to accept an invitation to a private dance. “I don’t want to go to these things. I don’t care about them. I want only you. Why can’t you be content with your home and me? Why are you not satisfied?”
“Oh, Paul!” she said, and entwined his arm with both her arms and leaned against him confidingly. “You know I’m satisfied. But we are living in the world, dear; we can’t shut ourselves off from it entirely. We can’t live just for ourselves.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“But,”—she protested, and looked up at him with puzzled eyes. “How can we?” she asked. “We must take our part, like other people. It isn’t good to live shut off: it’s cramping. I love you, I love my home; but I want other things. I want to see and talk with people. I want to meet other women. I want to—gossip—about the things women love discussing. I want to show off my clothes.”
“You show them off to me,” he said.
She laughed softly.
“To you!—you unappreciative male! I’ve everything in life to make a woman proud and glad and happy; and I want the world to know it. I long to parade my happiness, as a manikin parades the fashions, to the admiration and the envy of all beholders. Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I dance, boy? I love dancing. I’d love to dance with you.”
“I can’t dance,” he answered. “I don’t do any of these things.”