“Yes. It is impossible for any being of earthly origin to possess the celestial qualities promised in your countenance. It is out of harmony with terrestrial things. Why, when those three men put out their hands this morning for you to touch, I held my breath at their presumption. I looked for three bolts from heaven to wither the extended arms.”
“And your own face, Mr. Boyd, gives no indication of the subtleness of your irony: unkind, perhaps, but extremely clever.”
“Irony! Never! I had no such thought! I am merely announcing the discovery that with a different exterior you would have been less perfect; but more comfortable.”
“If this is not irony, it is something still more offensive. I gave you credit for a finer touch.”
“I may be clumsy, but not malicious.”
“Then explain.”
“Well, you see, having a tender conscience, you have felt a sense of fraud whenever confronted by your own reflection. Being human, you have had, presumably, ambitions, envies, appetites, prejudices, vanities, and other human ills of which the face before you gave no indication. 41And so, feeling the preternatural excellence of that face a lie, you have tried to live up to it; that is, to avoid being a humbug. In short, your life has been a strenuous endeavor to be unnecessarily wise and impossibly good.”
As their side of the steamer rose high above the sea, after an unusual plunge, he added: “And I am afraid you have succeeded.”
She remained silent, lost apparently in another revery, watching the changes in the west.
The light was fading. On sea and sky a more melancholy tone had come,–dull, slaty grays crowding in from every quarter. And over the darkening waters there seemed a tragic note, half-threatening, intensified by every plunge of the steamer and by the swish of waters very near the deck. There was a touch of melancholy, also, in the steady thumping of the engines.