Once Ellen might have pondered such a speech, wondering whether she should consider herself insulted by it. But in the experience of many talks with Sabine, she came to understand that there lay at the bottom of the observation no more than a complete honesty. Indeed, the remark was so honest that in the very moment it was made, Ellen saw not only its honesty but its truth. She was making her way by her wits. Sabine had nothing to make ... nothing to expect save a marriage which would occur in due time according to the plan that controlled all Sabine’s life. And the artist in Ellen leapt at once to assume the rôle. She would make her way by her wits, from now on, consciously. That placed her. It provided her with a certain definiteness of personality.
“People like that are always more sure of themselves,” Sabine continued. “I’ve noticed it. Take Mrs. Sigourney. She’s done it. She’s outraged some people but she’s got what she wanted.... She was nobody and now she’s chic. It’s her wits, always her wits.... She never does the wrong thing ... never puts herself in a place where she can be hurt.”
At the end of the speech, Sabine’s voice dropped suddenly. There was even a little echo of something ... perhaps a faint sigh, as if it came somewhere from deep within her. She had been hurt then, perhaps a long time ago. Perhaps her flawless clothes, her sharp and witty tongue, her air of entering a room, were all no more than an armor she had raised about herself. She was not, like Ellen, isolated, independent, free ... belonging to nothing, to no one, save only herself. Her friendship with Richard Callendar may only have been a bit of bravado, to flaunt in the face of the others who desired him.
Ellen saw it, clearly now. In the Town she would have been like Sabine. There, in a community all her own, they could have hurt her. Here in this world there was no one who could do her any injury. Alone, isolated, she was stronger than she had been in the very midst of all those who had known her since the beginning.
“I wish,” continued Sabine, “that you would tell me about yourself some time.... Tell me and Richard. He’s interested in such things.”
“But I must play now,” said Ellen.
On the same night when the hour came for Ellen to be sent home in Mrs. Callendar’s cabriolet, the plump woman said, “The next time.... Let’s see, it’s Thursday, isn’t it?... You must come for dinner.... I’ll send Wilkes at twenty to eight.”
28
THAT there was any such thing as kindliness involved in all these complicated, new relationships had never occurred to Ellen, perhaps because she had never for a moment expected it. It was only with the invitation to dinner, in itself a tacit recognition of her individuality as something more than a mere music box, that the real state of affairs first became clear to her. It was as if she had progressed a step in the world, as if she had achieved a little already of the vast things she had set out to accomplish. She tried, in her direct, unsubtle way of speaking, to convey something of the idea to Clarence. She wanted him, as always, desperately to understand her actions. She wanted him, perhaps dishonestly, to believe that she could not help acting as she did, that it was not from choice but from a desire to brighten both their lives that she left him now and then to venture forth into regions which it was impossible for him to penetrate. And in her own fashion, as she had done so often with her mother, she told him the truth selectively, so that although she did not lie she managed to achieve an effect that was not the truth.
The great thing which she neglected to admit was this ... that she had come now to the point where it was no longer possible to take him with her. Even his fantastic dreams could not make him more than he was, and that was not enough. He had come to the end of his tether. She had barely begun. Imagine him in Mrs. Callendar’s drawing-room! Fancy the abrupt Sabine Cane talking to him as she talked to Ellen! He, she knew, would suffer more than any one.