“I wish,” he said, finally—“I wish very much that I knew how to convince you. But I seem never to produce any impression upon you. You are unyielding to the touch. It is I who get molded and kneaded about whenever I come close to you. And I don’t say that it is not for the best. Only—only now, you will not accept my own ideas of what I should do, and you will not tell me what your ideas are.”
“I am not sure that I have any ideas,” she assured him. “It is merely that, on general principles, I don’t care for the people who settle difficulties by turning tail and running away from them.”
“Very well,” he began, as if an important premise had been accepted. “But as to my special case, I have stated what must be my position if I remain in England. To me it seems that it must be impossible—intolerable. But you have some different view, evidently. That is what I beg you to explain to me. If I am to remain in England, what is it your idea that I should do?” She knitted her brows a little, and took time to her reply. “You seem to think so entirely of yourself,” she said, slowly, “it is very hard to know what to say to you. I cannot put myself, you see, so completely in your place, as you are always able to do.” He opened his eyes wide, and informed their gaze with a surprised reproach. “There you are surely unjust to me,” he urged, pleadingly. “I do not know anyone who thinks more about other people than I do. One hesitates to say these things about oneself—but truly you are mistaken in this matter. In fact, I wonder sometimes if it is not a fault, a weakness in my nature, that I am so readily moved by the sufferings and wrongs of unhappy people. Whenever I see injustice, I am beside myself with a passion to set it right. I grow almost sick with indignation, and pity, when these things come before me. Last night, for example, at the Empire——”
Christian stopped abruptly, with the sudden consciousness that the ground was not clear before him. He saw that he was entirely without a clue as to what his companion’s views on the subject might be. That was her peculiarity: he knew concerning her thoughts and inclinations only what she chose to reveal to him. It was beyond his power to predict what her attitude would be on any new topic. Looking at her thoughtful, serene-eyed face, it decidedly seemed to him that the Empire, as an ethical problem, might with advantage be passed by. He hesitated for a moment, in the friendly shelter of the street noise, and then gave another termination to his speech: “It puzzles me that you should have that view of my temperament.”
“Ah, that is just it—you have put the word into my mouth. It is ‘temperament’ that you are thinking of—and about that you are perfectly right. Your temperament is as open to the impulses of the moment—kindly, generous, compassionate and all that—as a flower is to the bees. But character is another matter. What good do your fine momentary sentiments, these rapid noble emotions of yours, do you or anybody else? You experience them—and forget them. The only thing that abides permanently with you is consideration for your own personal affairs.”
“This is all very unjust,” he said, disconsolately. “I come to you for solace and friendship, and you turn upon me with beak and claws.” He sighed, with the beginning of tears in his bright eyes, as he added: “There is more reason than ever, it seems to me, why I should go away from England! It is not kind to me!”
His doleful tone and mien drove her to swift repentance. “Oh, I have only been saying the disagreeable things first, to get them out of the way,” she sought to reassure him. “There isn’t another unpleasant word for you to hear, not one, I promise you.”
“It is my opinion that there have been enough,” he ventured to comment, with a rueful little smile. A measure of composure returned to him. “But if they must be said, I would rather they come from you than from any one else, for I think that you have also some pleasant thoughts about me.”
She nodded her head several times in assent, regarding him with an amused twinkle in her eyes meanwhile. “Yes—the right kind of editor could make very interesting stuff indeed out of you,” she said, and smiled almost gaily at his visible failure to comprehend her figure. “What I mean is—you are too much sail, and too little boat. You drift before every new wind that blows. There is lacking that kind of balance—proportion—which gives stability. But, dear me, it is a thousand times better to be like that, than to have an excess of the other thing. The man of the solid qualities, without the imagination, simply sticks in the mud where he was born. But with you—if the right person chances to get hold of you, and brings the right influences steadily to bear upon you, then there is no telling what fine things you may not rise to.”
“You are that right person!”