The blood rushed to her head and washed the fog from her brain. “You are crazy,” she said; “let us go home.”
CHAPTER XXIX.
AN EPOCH-MAKING DEPARTURE.
A woman never moralizes until she has committed an immoral act. From the moment she voluntarily accepts it until the moment she casts it aside, she may do distasteful duty to the letter, but she does it mechanically. The laws and canons are laid down, and she follows them without analysis, however rebelliously. She may long for the forbidden as consistently as she accepts her yoke, whether the yoke be of untempted girlhood or hated matrimony; but the longing serves to deepen her antipathy to bonds; she sees no beauty in average conditions. After she has plucked the apple and eaten it raw, skin, core and all, and is suffering from the indigestion thereof, she is enabled to analytically compare it with such fruits as do not induce dyspepsia.
Although Hermia was far from acknowledging that she loved Quintard, she allowed him occasionally to reign in her imagination, and had more than one involuntary, abstract, but tender interview with him. This, she assured herself, was purely speculative, and in the way of objective amusement, like the theater or the opera. When she found that she thought of him always as her husband she made no protest; he was too good for anything less. Nor, she decided, had she met him earlier and been able to love him, would she have been content with any more imperfect union.
Cryder still came with more or less regularity. There were brief, frantic moments, as when she had sought death in the torrent; but on the whole she was too indifferent to break with him. Her life was already ruined; what mattered her actions? Moreover, habit is a tremendous force, and he had a certain hold over her, a certain fascination, with which the physical had nothing to do.
After she had known Quintard about two months she found herself free. Cryder, in truth, was quite as tired as herself. Ennui was in his tideless veins, and, moreover, the time had come to add another flower to his herbarium. But he did not wish to break with Hermia until his time came to leave the city. If she had loved him, it might have been worth while to hurt her; but, as even his egoism could not persuade him that she gave him more than temperate affection, he would not risk the humiliation of being laughed at.
One evening he told her that he must go South the following week and remain several months. His dialect was growing rusty, and the public would expect another novel from him in the coming spring. He hated to say good-bye to her, but his muse claimed his first and highest duty. Hermia felt as one who comes out of a room full of smoke—she wanted to draw a long breath and throw back her head. She replied very politely, however—they were always very polite—that she should miss him and look forward to his return. Neither would avow that this was the end of the matter, but each was devoutly thankful that the other was not a fool.
Cryder looked melancholy and handsome when he came to say good-bye. He had on extremely becoming traveling clothes, and his skin and eyes had their accustomed clearness. He bade Hermia a tender farewell, and his eyes looked resigned and sad. Then an abstracted gaze passed into them, as if his spirit had floated upward to a plane far removed from common affection.