“Rot. When the man comes along that can set those chords humming, ideals fly off in company with good resolutions. Now tell me your experience. You’ve had one of some sort. It’s only fair you should tell me. I’ve admired you more than any living woman, and I’d feel better if I could admire you less. You look ruthless, and you’ve had a good training to make you so—I used to rejoice at it—but, well, you are young and beautiful and you’ve red hair. Out with it.”
Julia, who under all her careless frankness, was intensely reserved, colored and hesitated; but this exasperated baring of her haughty friend’s inner self merited response, and she told the tale of her sudden awakening in India, of her deliberate search for a lover. Mrs. Herbert nodded triumphantly.
“But you see,” added Julia, “I couldn’t find him, because I wanted too much. They all made me laugh sooner or later, and a finer set of men I never met. They are all picked men out there, so to speak. They must be almost perfect physically, or they couldn’t stand the climate; they are absolutely without fear; they have every manly qualification, in fact, and quite enough brains. Many were charming. But they all seemed to melt into one composite man and made no deeper impression on me than if they were a statue erected to the glorification of British manhood. One can’t marry that.”
“All the men in the world are not in India. How about Nigel?”
“I like him better than anyone, but I can’t fall in love with him. I don’t fancy I’d have the chance again even if I wanted it. He’s now the head of his house and the last of it, and he takes his duties as a Whig peer with Socialist tendencies very seriously. To marry me would put an end to his public usefulness, for he would have to live out of England. When a man of Nigel’s sort reaches his age he faces his responsibilities, and when he balances them against a love-marriage that would cut him off from a good half of them he keeps out of temptation. I like him all the better for it, and if I had not become almost depersonalized in this cause, the woman in me might —”
“I don’t think it’s Nigel, but I do believe that one day you’ll have a battle to fight —”
“Not now. For a few days after I came back from India, perhaps. But I doubt if I ever have time again even to think of it. When I’m not talking, or speaking, or writing, I deliberately relax, as my master taught me, and that banishes thought. Every morning—during my walk—I recall some bit of the knowledge I was taught by Hadji Sadrä, and I could do this if my mind were excited, threatened with a deluge. Oh, I have had discipline of all sorts!”
“It sounds formidable enough. Perhaps you are one of the chosen. But —”
“I even wrote a long letter this morning to a man I might say I don’t know,” continued Julia, now in the full tide of self-revelation. “And it interested me mightily for the moment —”
“Ha!”