This, too, he was loath to renounce, but the swift joy in the girl was too strong for him. To such beauty the sternest will must bend. No bird's song, no sudden light upon a cloud, no trembling flower in its ecstacy, no tree in full burst of blossom could tell of so high a beauty as this joy that flashed from the very depths of her soul into her eyes, upon her lips, softening her throat, liquefying her every movement, and into her voice bringing such music as no poet has ever sung, no musician's brain conceived, music sent from regions deeper than the human soul can know to go soaring far beyond the limits set to human perception.
Rodd was dazed and dizzy with it, and longed every now and then to touch her, to hold her, to make sure that in the swiftness of her joy she would not fly away.... He talked gravely and solemnly, with an intent concentration, about the persons in his life who compared so sorrily with her. He was obviously composing them into a drama, which, however, he dared not carry to any conclusion. That there could ever be such another day as this was beyond his hopes, that he could ever return to what he was beggared his endurance....
'A queer thing happened to me the other day,' he said. 'I live among strange people, hangers-on of the theatre and the newspaper press. There is a woman——'
Clara caught her breath and looked tigerish. He did not notice the change and went on.
'There is a woman. She lives immediately below me. She has two children and God knows how she lives. She used to wait for me on the stairs in the evening to watch me go up. But I never spoke to her——'
Clara smiled happily.
'She used to do me little services. She would darn my socks, and sometimes cook me some dainty and lay it outside my door. This went on for months, I never spoke to her, because she has a terrible mother who lives with her.... A week or two ago, she met me as I came upstairs in the evening, and told me one of her children was ill, and asked me to go for the doctor.... I did so, and she looked so exhausted that I went in and helped her. The mother was no use at all; a fat, lazy beast of a woman who drinks, swears, eats, and sleeps.... We wrestled with death for the life of the child, but we were beaten.... It died. She waits for me now, and tries to talk to me, but I will not do it. She is frenzied in her attentions. She wants sympathy. She has it, but wants more than that. A word from me, and I should never be able to shake her off. She would cling to me, and because she clung she would believe that she loved me, but she would have nothing but my weakness.... It has happened before. They seem to find some bitter triumph in a man's weakness.'
The humility of his confession touched Clara deeply. It was the humility of the man's feeling, in contrast with his ferocious, intellectual arrogance, that moved her to a compassion which steadied her in her swift joy. His story revealed his life to her so vividly that she felt that without more she knew him through and through. Everything else was detail with which she had no particular concern.
They walked along in silence for some time, he brooding, she smiling happily, and she pictured the two sides of his life, the rich and powerful imaginative activity, and the simple tenderness of his solitude.
It seemed to be her turn to confess, but she could not. The day's perfection would be marred for them, and that she would not have. He would understand. Yes, he would understand, but men have illusions which are very dear to them. She must protect them, and let him keep them until the dear reality made it necessary for him to discard them.