He turned his head towards the dim interior of the room and for a dazed moment thought that he beheld Spring herself. She wore white and had dropped a mass of wild flowers at her feet; she looked as if rising out of them. Her hat was covered with poppies and wild azalea, and she had a sheaf of buttercups and "blue eyes" in her belt.
"I haven't changed my ideas one bit," she said, with a shrug, as Gwynne rose and came towards her. "But I can't help it!"
IX
Isabel rose as usual at five, but, instead of dressing at once, stood at her window idly and looked out over the marsh. Thirteen hours before she had made a decision on the instant, or so it seemed to her, and in that instant changed her life so completely that she was still a little dizzy, and the future as yet had taken on no coherent form. She had even told Gwynne she was positive she could stand him for ever, and this, with her varied if incomplete knowledge of his sex, she took to be even more significant and hopeful than the uncompromising sense of loving him. No doubt there would be many interesting battles before two such developed personalities became more or less one, but at least he had none of the petty and selfish and altogether detestable qualities of her father, her uncle, and Lyster Stone; and he was entirely human. And he was young and she was young. It all seemed very wonderful; wonderful to be so happy, and yet to feel that she had relinquished nothing, or at least not the tenth of what she would have lost if she had married Prestage—or any other man. If she had not met Gwynne she knew that she never should have married at all, and, not having had the best within her ken, been happy enough.
And yet she was a little sad, and it was by no means the gentle melancholy of reaction. She had reason, and felt a disposition to box her own ears. She knew that Gwynne, triumphant and happy as he was, had ridden away vaguely dissatisfied. He had turned and given her a keen questioning glance as he mounted, and had not turned again. She had laughed, and waved her hand, and felt a new desire to tantalize him.
She had abandoned herself to sheer happiness the day before, to the mere pagan delight in an ardent lover come in her own ardent youth, to the sense of an unbroken circle of companionship, and to so wild a triumph in having brought Gwynne to her feet, made him quite mad about her, that she had fairly danced about the room, and tormented him as far as she dared.
This was Wednesday. They were to be married on Saturday, that Lady Victoria, who was leaving for England in the evening, might nod them a blessing. Then, no doubt, Gwynne would have his way in most things, and she already felt the stirrings of mere female ductility. But meanwhile she should exercise and enjoy her own power to the full. And she had good reason to believe that no woman had ever been more charming, distracting, provocative. If Gwynne had been in love when he came, he had kissed her very feet when he left, and had been as bewitched as anyone so clear-brained could be. Moreover, she had promised him everything he wished, agreed without demur to the hasty marriage, and even, when he asked her whether she would prefer to live in her house or his, had sweetly left it to him to decide. They were to spend the honeymoon in the house on Russian Hill. She was incapable of looking beyond that. There had been at least twenty bewildering hints that when his time came one rein, at least, should be his—in all matters of great moment, two—and although no doubt she would break away very often, what more delightful than to recapture and subdue? What more could a man want than the most fascinating woman in the world, whom only his own passion could shock from mere existence into the fulness of life? But Gwynne, in the depths of his swimming brain, had wanted something more, and Isabel knew that if he had slept as ill as herself, the doubt had more than once assailed him if she were anything more than a charming beautiful and clever creature, save perverse and egotistical; who would keep him distractedly in love with her, but leave the best part of him unsatisfied.
Her perversity had gone with him, and during a more or less wakeful night she had repented, and even wept at the thought that something might occur to exterminate him before ten o'clock on the following morning—when they were to meet again—and he would depart unconsoled by the knowledge that it was the greater needs in his own nature that had called to hers. At least she hoped this was so, and, in an excess of humility, wondered if she really had enough to give—the power to insure their complete happiness. She had lived in a sort of fool's paradise, and no doubt imagined herself a far more rounded being than she was. Well, she could grow, and finally she had curled down into her pillow and fallen asleep.
This morning she was rather tired, and although still repentant, suspicious that when he returned her femininity would fly up with her spirits, and she would be more than content to fascinate and bewilder him. Like all women in love and fumbling blindly through the outer mysteries, she was eagerly psychological, discovering once for all her sex and herself.