“Well, it made a lot, and if you care to hear it I’ll tell you something about my own mother.”
He leaned over and emptied the ashes of his pipe into the lake. When he turned to her his eyes were bright and his cheeks flushed, but his expression betrayed nothing more than kindly interest. “Please do,” he said warmly. “One confidence deserves another. I’ve heard scraps—you are a much-discussed young person, you know—and I’m keen to hear the story at first hand.”
“You’ll not put me in a book!” There was a very faint note of alarm in her voice, and she experienced another titillation at the possibility.
“If you really do not want to be ‘put in a book’ you are even more original than you look. But suppose we defer introducing anything so extraneous to the moment as fiction? I certainly should not take such a liberty without your consent after you had given me your confidence. Just now I am only interested in discovering what has made you so different from Bladina.”
This subtle touch completed the conquest of Gita’s jealous reserve. To her increasing amazement she found herself unburdening her soul of the poisonous accumulations of her twenty-two years. She told the chronicle from the beginning, omitting no detail, extrinsic or subjective. If she paused to remind herself that she was breaking the habit of a lifetime and turning herself inside out—to a man! Of all things!—she concluded that an author was much the same as a father confessor, but more appreciative of high-lights; she knew that she was telling an interesting story and telling it well.
Bylant, overwhelmingly interested in her both as a man and an ardent psychologist, was quite aware of her attitude toward himself, and although the man in him rebelled, for he was more in love with her every moment, he consoled himself with the pregnant certainty that he was her first confidant; and, whether she resented the act later or not, she was creating an indissoluble bond. It was a long first step and he knew the virtue of patience.
But Gita’s indifference to anything below the intellectual dome of her new friend was complete. She felt buoyant and released, as if she had suddenly been hauled out of a dungeon and introduced to light and freedom, and she felt grateful and quite willing to take him on as a doctor. He had certainly purged her soul. To talk about herself after all these years of repression had been almost ecstatic and she knew she had committed the wisest act of her life. But she concluded on a light note.
“There, you’ve had it all! Not a pretty story, is it? And you must be thankful I’m not your mother.”
“If you hadn’t been her psychological—and physiological—twin your story would have been very different and you wouldn’t have told it.”