“I will forgive you.”
“I shall hate myself——”
“I will love you.”
“I shall feel that I am the most miserable wretch alive.”
“I shall be happy.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
George had rowed to a point where a deep indentation in the shore of the river offered a broad expanse of water in which there was but little current. He rested on his oars, bending his head and leaning slightly forward. It seemed very hard that he should suddenly be called upon to decide so important a question as had just arisen, at the very moment when he was writing the most difficult and interesting part of his book. To go away was not only to deprive himself of many things which he liked, and among those Mamie’s own society had taken the foremost place of late; it meant also to break the current of his ideas and to arrest his own progress at the most critical juncture. He remembered with loathing the days he had spent in his little room in New York, cudgelling his inert brain and racking his imagination for a plot, a subject, for one single character, for anything of which he might make a beginning. And he looked back to a nearer time, and saw how easily his mind had worked amidst its new and pleasant surroundings. It is no wonder that he hesitated. Only the artist can understand his own interest in his art; only the writer, and the writer of real talent, can tell what acute suffering it is to be interrupted in the midst of a piece of good work, while its success is still uncertain in the balance of his mind and while he still depends largely upon outward circumstances for the peace and quiet which are necessary to serious mental labour.
George was not heroic, though there was a touch of quixotism in his nature. The temptation to stay where he was, had a force he had not expected. Moreover, whether he would or not, the expression he had twice seen in Mamie’s face on that afternoon, haunted him and fascinated him. He experienced the operation of a charm unknown before. He looked up and gazed at the young girl as she sat far back in the stern of the boat. She was not pretty, or at most, not more than half pretty. Her mouth was decidedly far too large, and her nose lacked outline. She had a fairly good forehead; he admitted that much, but her chin was too pointed and had little modelling in it, while her cheeks would have been decidedly uninteresting but for the extreme beauty of her complexion. She was looking down, and he could not see the grey eyes which were her best feature, but it could not be denied that the long dark drooping lashes and the strongly marked brown eyebrows contrasted very well with the transparent skin. Her hair was not bad, though it was impossible to say whether those little tangled ringlets were natural or were produced daily by the skilful appliance of artificial torsion. If her mouth was an exaggerated feature, at least the long, even lips were fresh and youthful, and, when parted, they disclosed a very perfect set of teeth. All this was true, and as George looked, he summed up the various points and decided that when Mamie wore her best expression, she might pass for a pretty girl.
But she possessed more than that. The catalogue did not explain her wonderful charm. It was not, indeed, complete, and as he glanced from her downcast face to the outlines of her shapely figure, he felt the sensation a man experiences in turning quickly from the examination of a common object, to the contemplation of one that is very beautiful. Psyche herself could have boasted no greater perfection of form and grace than belonged to this girl whose features were almost all insignificant. The triumph of proportion began at her throat, under the small ears that were set so close to the head, and the faultless lines continued throughout all the curves of beauty to the point of her exquisite foot, to the longest finger of her classic hand. Not a line was too short, not a line too long, there was no straightness in any one, and not one of them all followed too strong a curve.
George thought of Constance and made comparisons with a coolness that surprised himself. Constance was tall, straight, well grown, active; slight, indeed, but graceful enough, and gifted with much natural ease in motion. But that was all, so far as figure was concerned. George had seen a hundred girls with just the same advantages as Constance, and all far prettier than his cousin. Neither Constance nor any of them could compare with Mamie except in face. His eye rested on her now, when she was in repose, with untiring satisfaction, as his sight delighted in each new surprise of motion when she moved, whether on horseback, or walking, or at tennis. She represented to him the absolute ideal of refined animal life, combined with something spiritual that escaped definition, but which made itself felt in all she did and said.