“So!” Leopold spoke with sympathy. “I did not know. Forgive me.”
“Oh, that’s all right.”
They tramped along sturdily.
“Have you told her that you—”
“Merciful heavens!” Blynn broke forth; but restrained further speech.
“Why not?” Leopold asked kindly.
“She is a child. Oh, yes! yes! yes!” he struck down the attempted interruption. “I have taken her by the hand and led her as an older brother might take his little sister. I have watched over her ... talked to her of books, of life, of God.... I have been the confidant of her little troubles and have—have—tried to give her courage and—understanding. She has opened the door of her life to me. I have stepped within and have broken bread with her. Now ... how could I desecrate ... how could I sully ... I don’t mean that. It is hard for me to say, Leopold. I can’t explain it to you. To me she is still a serious-eyed, fearless child, who has come to me in the perfect faith of innocence.... My reason doesn’t tell me that. My reason tells me to go and seize her, fight you for her, and carry her off. But there’s something else.... You call it Puritan.... Maybe it is racial, or an inheritance. Maybe it is only superstition. Whatever it is, it holds me fast. I am chained, bound absolutely. I cannot speak. I cannot go to that child and—and—unmask.... Let’s go back.”
They turned and trudged along the uneven road without speaking until a stray light or two along the Chestnut Hill Pike told them they were coming back into the village.
“I have been wondering,” Leopold spoke thoughtfully, “what it is that draws us to our mates. Nobody knows. It is the greatest mystery in creation. Let us face the facts: Gorgas is a remarkable girl; she thinks; she has unusual abilities. Good! But that is not what draws us. I know dozens of women who are her superior—women whose conversation is—well!—shall I say more congenial? The truth is, Gorgas is not ready to enter on an intellectual level with either of us. In fact—well!—her education must be kept up—uh—afterwards. You are right; in many respects she is yet a child. I see things as a biologist: I fancy that her charm, after all, is her youth and her astonishing health. That is the mating cry—health.”
“If you don’t mind, Leopold,” Blynn stopped, “I’ll leave you here and cut off across this field alone.”