“I was Semiramis before,” said Hermia, indifferently. She turned her head and gave him a meditative glance. “Do you know,” she said, with an instinct of coquetry rare to her, “I cannot understand your being a realistic author.”
He was somewhat taken aback, but he replied promptly: “That is a mere accident. To tell you the truth, I care no more for realism than I do for idealism, and dialect is a frightful bore. I will tell you what I have told no one else. Now that my position is established, my name made, I am going to leave dialect to those who can do no better, and write a great romantic novel.”
Hermia thought his last remark a trifle conceited, but she forgave it for the sake of its sentiment. “I shall like that,” she said, “and be romantic without sensationalism. Tell me the plot of your book.”
“It is too vague to formulate, but you and your house are to be its inspiration. I have wanted to meet a woman like you; the study will be an education. Tell me of your life. You have not always been as you are now?”
Hermia gave him a startled glance. “What do you mean?” she demanded.
“I mean that you have two personalities, an actual and an assumed. You are playing a part.”
Hermia gave him a fierce glance from beneath her black brows. “You know that until a year ago I was poor and obscure, and you are rude enough to remind me that I play the part of grande dame very badly,” she exclaimed.
“I beg your pardon,” said Cryder, quickly, “I knew nothing of the kind. You might have spent the last ten years in a fashionable boarding-school for all I have heard to the contrary. But I repeat what I said. I received two impressions the night we met. One was that you were at war with something or somebody; the other that you had a double personality, and that of one the world had no suspicion. It is either that you have a past, or that you are at present in conditions entirely new and consequently unfamiliar. I believe it is the latter. You do not look like a woman who has lived. There is just one thing wanting to make your face the most remarkable I have seen; but until it gets that it will be like a grand painting whose central figure has been left as the last work of the artist.”
Hermia leaned her elbow on her knee and covered her face with her hand. She experienced the most pleasurable sensation she had ever known. This was the first man who had shown the faintest insight into her contradictory personality and complicated nature. For the moment she forgot where she was, and she gave a little sigh which brought the blood to her face. To love would not be so difficult as she had imagined.
“What is it?” asked Cryder, gently. He had been watching her covertly. “I want to amend something I said a moment ago. You have not lived in fact but you have in imagination, and the men your fancy has created have made those of actual, prosaic life appear tame and colorless.”