V
JASON SETS FORTH UPON THE GREAT ADVENTURE
Miss Benham stood at one of the long drawing-room windows of the house in the rue de l'Université, and looked out between the curtains upon the rather grimy little garden, where a few not very prosperous cypresses and chestnuts stood guard over the rows of lilac shrubs and the box-bordered flower-beds and the usual moss-stained fountain. She was thinking of the events of the past month, the month which had elapsed since the evening of the De Saulnes' dinner-party. They were not at all startling events; in a practical sense there were no events at all, only a quiet sequence of affairs which was about as inevitable as the night upon the day--the day upon the night again. In a word, this girl, who had considered herself very strong and very much the mistress of her feelings, found, for the first time in her life, that her strength was as nothing at all against the potent charm and magnetism of a man who had almost none of the qualities she chiefly admired in men. During the month's time she had passed from a phase of angry self-scorn through a period of bewilderment not unmixed with fear, and from that she had come into an unknown world, a land very strange to her, where old standards and judgments seemed to be valueless--a place seemingly ruled altogether by new emotions, sweet and thrilling, or full of vague terrors as her mood veered here or there.
That sublimated form of guesswork which is called "woman's intuition" told her that Ste. Marie would come to her on this afternoon, and that something in the nature of a crisis would have to be faced. It can be proved even by poor masculine mathematics that guesswork, like other gambling ventures, is bound to succeed about half the time, and it succeeded on this occasion. Even as Miss Benham stood at the window looking out through the curtains, M. Ste. Marie was announced from the doorway.
She turned to meet him with a little frown of determination, for in his absence she was often very strong, indeed, and sometimes she made up and rehearsed little speeches of great dignity and decision in which she told him that he was attempting a quite hopeless thing, and, as a well-wishing friend, advised him to go away and attempt it no longer. But as Ste. Marie came quickly across the room toward her, the little frown wavered and at last fled from her face and another look came there. It was always so. The man's bodily presence exerted an absolute spell over her.
"I have been sitting with your grandfather for half an hour," Ste. Marie said. And she said:
"Oh, I'm glad! I'm very glad! You always cheer him up. He hasn't been too cheerful or too well of late." She unnecessarily twisted a chair about, and after a moment sat down in it. And she gave a little laugh. "This friendship which has grown up between my grandfather and you," said she--"I don't understand it at all. Of course, he knew your father and all that; but you two seem such very different types, I shouldn't think you would amuse each other at all. There's Mr. Hartley, for example. I should expect my grandfather to like him very much better than you, but he doesn't--though I fancy he approves of him much more."
She laughed again, but a different laugh; and when he heard it Ste. Marie's eyes gleamed a little and his hands moved beside him.