“You seem to have a great admiration for clowns,” observed Clare in an indifferent tone.
“Well—they are amusing, aren’t they? Of course, it isn’t high art, and that sort of thing, but one laughs at them, and sometimes they do very pretty things. One can’t be always on one’s hind legs, doing Hamlet, can one? There’s a limit to the amount of tragedy one can stand during life. After all, it is better to laugh than to cry.”
“When one can,” said Mrs. Bowring thoughtfully.
“Some people always can, whatever happens,” said the young girl.
“Perhaps they are right,” answered the young man. “Things are not often so serious as they are supposed to be. It’s like being in a house that’s supposed to be haunted—on All Hallow E’en, for instance—it’s awfully gruesome and creepy at night when the wind moans and the owls screech. And then, the next morning, one wonders how one could have been such an idiot. Other things are often like that. You think the world’s coming to an end—and then it doesn’t, you know. It goes on just the same. You are rather surprised at first, but you soon get used to it. I suppose that is what is meant by losing one’s illusions.”
“Sometimes the world stops for an individual and doesn’t go on again,” said Mrs. Bowring, with a faint smile.
“Oh, I suppose people do break their hearts sometimes,” returned Brook, somewhat thoughtfully. “But it must be something tremendously serious,” he added with instant cheerfulness. “I don’t believe it happens often. Most people just have a queer sensation in their throat for a minute, and they smoke a cigarette for their nerves, and go away and think of something else.”
Clare looked at him, and her eyes flashed angrily, for she remembered Lady Fan’s cigarette and the preceding evening. He remembered it too, and was thinking of it, for he smiled as he spoke and looked away at the horizon as though he saw something in the air. For the first time in her life the young girl had a cruel impulse. She wished that she were a great beauty, or that she possessed infinite charm, that she might revenge the little lady in white and make the man suffer as he deserved. At one moment she was ashamed of the wish, and then again it returned, and she smiled as she thought of it.
She was vaguely aware, too, that the man attracted her in a way which did not interfere with her resentment against him. She would certainly not have admitted that he was interesting to her on account of Lady Fan—but there was in her a feminine willingness to play with the fire at which another woman had burned her wings. Almost all women feel that, until they have once felt too much themselves. The more innocent and inexperienced they are, the more sure they are, as a rule, of their own perfect safety, and the more ready to run any risk.
Neither of the women answered the young man’s rather frivolous assertion for some moments. Then Mrs. Bowring looked at him kindly, but with a far-away expression, as though she were thinking of some one else.