XI
Gwynne, between the fog and the story, felt congealed to the marrow. He leaned his elbows on his knees and stared at the bottom of the boat. It was the second time that the dark and carefully guarded recesses of the human soul had been opened to him, but Zeal's at least were a man's, and he had listened to him with a certain passive acceptance cut with lightning-like visions of his own ruined future. He had never been invited into a woman's crypts before, and he hardly knew whether he were gratified or repelled. She had been as brutally truthful as he would have expected her to be if she spoke at all, but he doubted if he understood her as well as he had expected. He had been assured that she had once at least possessed the capacity for intense feeling, but what was the result? And were the depths frozen solid? Or merely buried alive?
He remarked after a moment: "I cannot think of anything appropriate to say, so perhaps it is as well to say nothing. I certainly do not feel that you are in any need of my sympathies, for you are quite terribly strong. When did all this happen?"
"About eight months before I went to England."
"What did you do with yourself in the interval?"
"I climbed in the Alps a bit, then went to Rome and studied the Campagna, then travelled somewhat in Spain. By that time the desire for California had grown insistent. The novelty of Europe had worn thin. I was tired of playing at doing things, and only at home could I really accomplish anything. I suddenly made up my mind to pay the long-delayed visit to England, stopping in Paris by the way for frocks. I doubt if I ever enjoyed anything more than those three weeks in Paris, where I completely forgot every unpleasant association. It was my first fine wardrobe, my first opportunity to experience to the full the delight of clothes. I have felt quite happy here. California is so far from every other place that it is almost like living on a detached planet. You forget the rest of the world for months at a time. For days after I returned I wandered about out-of-doors in a gay irresponsible mood, and carolled all over the house. Of course it was nothing but the electricity of the climate and that I was in my own State once more and took an insane pride in it. You do not even need to be born here for that; it comes with the inevitable sense of isolation. You will feel it in time. If I had not known that so certainly I should never have dared to urge you to come."
Gwynne smiled with a pardonable cynicism; but while he was not unwilling the conversation should turn upon himself, his curiosity was not satisfied. The fog had gone and the moon had risen. He could see Isabel quite plainly. She had turned her head and was gazing out over the great expanse desolated by the moonlight, and he studied her profile for the first time, often as he had observed it. To-night with the moonlight on it and against the dark hills it was almost repellently unmodern in its sharply cut regularity, the classic modelling of the eye-socket and chin, the nose with its slight arch. Her hair had fallen from its pins and hung in a braid, its length concealed by her position, and making the effect of a queue. She had long since taken off her hat and wrapped its veil about her head. The veil had slipped and might easily have been mistaken for a ribbon confining the queue at the base of the head. For an instant Gwynne's senses swam. He recalled the portraits of their Revolutionary ancestors in the house on Russian Hill. It might have been a medallion suspended before him. He drew in his breath; then his eye fell to the short thin sensitive upper lip, rarely quiet for all her extraordinary repose; to the full enticing under lip, and the little black moles. Then his gaze wandered down to the rough shooting-jacket, to the rubber boots reaching to her waist, and he only restrained himself from laughing aloud because he feared to rush down the curtain before that secretive nature.
"Then you have no faith in love as the best thing in the world?" he asked.
She turned upon him her clear dreaming eyes. "I have faith enough in love, as I have faith in death, or any other of the uncontrovertible facts, as well as in its mission. But not as the best thing in life; not for my sort at least. Not for even the domestic, for that matter, unless they are utterly brainless. I believe that from the beginning of time the misery of the world has been caused by the superstition that love was all. It must continue to be the fate of the child-bearing woman, I suppose—for a while at least; but others have blundered upon the fact that it is a mere incident, and are far happier in consequence. To women like Anabel freedom means an indulgent husband and plenty of money. To others it means something of which the Anabels know the bare nomenclature: an absolute freedom of the soul, of which the outer independence is but the symbol. As I said, we only find it when we have finished with the bogie of love. It is a modern enough discovery. Think of the poor old maids of the generations behind us, who, failing to marry, collapsed into insignificance instead of revelling in their deliverance. And what humiliation to know that in your youth you are really wooed for the sake of the race alone, no matter what the delusions. If any one doubts it let him compare the matrimonial opportunities of the ugly maternal girl and the ugly clever girl. When clever women realize that they are a sex apart and wait until their first youth at least is over before selecting a companion of the sex that I am quite willing to concede must always interest us more than our own, and no doubt is necessary to our completion, then will the world have taken its first step towards real happiness."