“Oh, Mendel!” she cried; “I’m so proud—so proud of you.”
She was too swift for him. He came lumbering after her, puzzled, amazed, confounded at finding in this girl something that was so much more than woman, something that could actually live on the high level of his creative thought, something as necessary to his thought as dew to the grass and the ripening corn.
[V
LOGAN GIVES A PARTY]
THE impulse to take his doubts to Logan endured, and was aggravated by the wretchedness into which Mendel was plunged by Morrison’s return and her powerful effect upon his life. He raged against himself as an idiot and a fool for taking her seriously and for believing that she could realize his work when as yet he understood it so little himself. If it was love, then have the love-making and get it over. If she refused, then let her go! What did she mean by slipping away just when the day’s happiness began to demand utterance, closeness, intimacy, the promise of the dearest and most comfortable joys?
He knew that he was deceiving himself, that she could do just as she liked and it would make no difference, but he also knew that he mistrusted her. In his heart he suspected her of being one of those who like to pretend that life can be all roses and honey, that there can be summer without winter, day without night. . . . Just a pretty English girl, he called her, and, in his most bitter moods, he regarded himself as caught; and in that there was a certain sardonic satisfaction. It seemed appropriate that, having known many women without a particle of love for them, he should be in love with a woman who did not wish to have anything to do with him.
When he told Logan about it, that experienced individual smoked three cigarettes and was silent for ten minutes by the clock.
“It won’t do,” he said; “give it up. You’re in love with her. Oh yes! You were bound to have your taste of it, being so young. But, for God’s sake, keep it clear of your work. I know it is very delightful and all that, and like the first blush of spring, and that she seems to understand everything. First love is always the same. She seems to understand, but so do the violets in the woods, and the apple-blossom in an orchard, and the singing birds on a spring morning. They all seem to understand everything. Life is solved: there are no more problems, and the rarest flower of all is the human heart. Yet the violets and the apple-blossoms fade and the birds sing no more: the spring passes and the summer is infernally hot and stale, and winter comes at last. So it is with love and women. Nothing endures but art, and that they are physically incapable of understanding. My God! Don’t I know it? A picture of mine means no more to Oliver than my boot does—rather less, because my boot is warmed with the warmth of my body. That’s all she understands.”
He looked down at the boots and fidgeted with his hands.