“But yours is a special case of nerves,” Celia pursued, with gentle imperturbability. “I think I can make my meaning clear to you—though the parallel isn't precisely an elegant one. The finest thoroughbred dog in the world, if it is beaten viciously and cowed in its youth, will always have a latent taint of nervousness, apprehension, timidity—call it what you like. Well, it seems to me there's something like that in your case, Edith. They hurt you too cruelly, poor girl. I won't say it broke your nerve—but it made a flaw in it. Just as a soldier's old wound aches when there's a storm in the air—so your old hurt distracts and upsets you under certain psychological conditions. It's a rather clumsy explanation, but I think it does explain.”
“Perhaps—I don't know,” Edith replied, in a tone of melancholy reverie. “It makes a very poor creature out of me, whatever it is.”
“I rather lose patience, Edith,” her companion admonished her, gravely. “Nobody has a right to be so deficient in courage as you allow yourself to be.”
“But I'm not a coward,” the other protested. “I could be as brave as anybody—as brave as you are—if a chance were given me. But of what use is bravery against a wall twenty feet high? I can't get over it. I only wound and cripple myself by trying to tear it down, or break through it.—Oh yes, I know what you say! You say there is no wall—that it is all an illusion of mine. But unfortunately I'm unable to take that view. I've battered myself against it too long—too sorely, Celia!”
Celia shrugged her shoulders in comment. “Oh, we women all have our walls—our limitations—if it comes to that,” she said, with a kind of compassionate impatience in her tone. “We are all ridiculous together—from the point of view of human liberty. The free woman is a fraud—a myth. She is as empty an abstraction as the 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity' that the French put on their public buildings. I used to have the most wonderful visions of what independence would mean. I thought that when I was absolutely my own master, with my money and my courage and my free mind, I would do things to astonish all mankind. But really the most I achieve is the occasional mild surprise of a German waiter. Even that palls on one after a time. And if you were independent, Edith—if you had any amount of money—what difference do you think it would make to you? What could you do that you don't do, or couldn't do, now?”
“Ah, now”—said the other, looking up with a thin smile—“now is an interval—an oasis.”
Miss Madden's large, handsome, clear-hued face, habitually serene in its expression, lost something in composure as she regarded her companion. “I don't know why you should say that,” she observed, gently enough, but with an effect of reproof in her tone. “I have never put limits to the connection, in my own mind—and it hadn't occurred to me that you were doing so in yours.”
“But I'm not,” interposed Lady Cressage.
“Then I understand you less than ever. Why do you talk about an 'interval'? What was the other word?—'oasis'—as if this were a brief halt for refreshments and a breathing-spell, and that presently you must wander forth into the desert again. That suggestion is none of mine. We agreed that we would live together—'pool our issues,' as they say in America. I wanted a companion; so did you. I have never for an instant regretted the arrangement. Some of my own shortcomings in the matter I have regretted. You were the most beautiful young woman I had ever seen, and you were talented, and you seemed to like me—and I promised myself that I would add cheerfulness and a gay spirit to your other gifts—and in that I have failed wofully. You're not happy. I see that only too clearly.”
“I know—I'm a weariness and a bore to you,” broke in the other, despondingly.