‘But surely you agree that man is just that: a mechanical toy in the hands of Necessity. The illusion of freewill is only disguised mechanism.’
‘How dreadful!’ Sheila exclaimed. ‘Then Henley’s lines:
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul—
are meaningless to you?’
‘The man who thinks that he is master of his fate is the most enslaved of all persons,’ said Edward. ‘For he is not even master of the facts.’
‘That’s a quotation from your book, I believe,’ said Sheila. And the young man blushed.
This was the beginning of a long and animated discussion, the first of many. In Edward Sheila discovered that reliability which she had thought could be attributed to no person. His mind was keen and critical: it worked with a certain deadly precision that was as impressive and at times almost as terrifying as a piece of gigantic machinery. He had doubts and hesitancies indeed: the hesitancies of one aware of the subtleties, the baffling complexity, of problems which less careful minds deemed simple; but once he had reached a definite decision, nothing short of overpowering ratiocination, no consideration of comfort or sentiment, could shake him from it. And while her sense of poetry revolted against a certain aridness in his philosophy, the very magnitude and the shattering presumption of his attempt to rationalize the universe overpowered her imagination and thrilled her with a sense of great adventure.
4
In sharp contrast with this austere enthusiasm for Edward Fairfield and his work, there flickered up in her heart a secret romantic compassion for the Honourable Richard Bunnard, that fair-haired, frank-eyed, simple-minded young man, whose nickname, Bunny, appeared even to the eye of affection so entirely suitable. For his youth and good nature, for his docility, for the irresponsible levity that even the Fairfield atmosphere could not entirely inhibit, and still more for the less definite charm he unconsciously exercised over her, Sheila conceived a liking that trembled sometimes dangerously on the verge of tenderness. She was stirred by his voluntary surrender of his personality into the grasping hands of Hypatia, the high-priestess of a new oracle, and trembled at the thought of his being immolated, a blood sacrifice, upon that godless altar. But, most of all, the memory of his music troubled the deep cool waters of her mind. She sought in him often, and sometimes for a fleeting instant found, the transfigured face of the violinist who had once laid his spell upon her.