‘I see—I seem to see the wall or door, I can’t tell exactly which, it is dark behind there.’
‘Can you see the pictures on the wall?’
‘Yes, by canting my head slightly, I see a frame. I can’t tell what the picture is, though; I am near-sighted at best.’
‘Yes, I know. I don’t want that picture to come into your range of vision; hold your head straight.’
‘Then I see nothing but myself,’ said Mark, turning round to see what really was behind him, and why he was put through these tactics. There was nothing behind him. Rob stood at the side of the table; but now he sat down, and said:
‘I want your attention and your friendliest belief in what I am going to tell you. I am quite in earnest, and I assume that you will credit every word I say. The interpretation you give it will be your own—I shall not combat it; but up to the point when you can consider it as a whole, I want you to hold your judgment in suspense.’
The two men sat facing each other, Rob’s face being animated by his resolve to put his thought into words, to weigh his problem in the scales of an alien mind, to try and see himself and his idea through other eyes than his own. Mark’s face was quiet, attentive, and delicate in its expression of suspended judgment. He was a man who held friendship as a sacred obligation, and was ready to meet a demand with single-minded generosity.
‘A month ago,’ said Rob, slowly weighing each word, ‘I came home from Mabel’s. We had come to an understanding as to the time for our wedding.’
Mark moved restlessly, and shaded his eyes with his hand.
‘I sat down where you have just been sitting, and leaned my chin on my hands as I made you do. I felt excited and disturbed. The full significance of the next step dawned on me in all its depth and meaning. I was carried along by my agitated thoughts, and found myself looking at myself in the glass. I was struck, as anyone is at such a moment, by the strangeness of my own face caught with some controlling emotion on it. I seemed outside and apart from my usual self. As the consciousness of observing myself came to me, I began to look more as I usually do when I casually glance in the glass, to tie my scarf, for instance. Then I fell to speculating on that other fellow that I had seen when he was unawares. I suppose it is a common experience, this meeting with oneself. I must have been quite deeply absorbed, when, gradually, I saw over my left shoulder a shadow—no, not a shadow, but a semblance of a face. There was a sort of golden halo or fringe of golden hair over a pair of smiling red-brown eyes. I caught myself smiling involuntarily in response. The eyes were above the level of my own, as if a woman were standing there looking over my shoulder and meeting my eyes in the glass. Mabel’s eyes are dark. Her eyes were a red-brown. I could not see her face—not that it was hidden, but it was as if the eyes were so absorbing that they blotted out all else. This lasted for some minutes, then I turned to see what was behind me that would produce such an illusion. There was nothing there that could be twisted or warped into any semblance of a face. I took the same position again, my chin on my hands, my elbows on the table. It was some time before I could get the vision—not till my thoughts began to wander; then I saw those strange, beautiful eyes again, and the fluffy golden hair, and not till I moved my head did they disappear. The eyes smiled at me; the vision seemed warm and human—not in the faintest degree ghostly, except that somehow I couldn’t see much but the eyes. As I say, I was driven by curiosity to turn round, and she vanished. I failed to call her to me again that night, and the next, and for some days; then she came again. I had sat here for hours waiting for her. I was determined to see what would come of it. I used to spend whole evenings here alone, waiting. When, at last, she did come, she came smiling, warm, human; and this time I saw her mouth—a large, mobile mouth, less smiling than the eyes, but most lovely. She came again and again. Once I put my hand behind me suddenly—that was a mistake. She vanished, and it was many evenings after that before she came again. The next time, strangely enough, I could see her more distinctly than ever. Her eyes were not smiling; maybe that was why I could see the rest of her face better. Then I discerned how beautiful she was. Her chin was a perfect oval, and it terminated in a lovely point below her gracious mouth; it was distractingly beautiful. My left hand was hanging by my side, and I could distinctly feel her draperies brushing tremulously against it. You will have the same sensation if you let this scarf brush across your hand—so. This silent drama went on for some weeks. I neglected everything for her. One day Mabel sent for me, and told me she had noticed my abstraction and had drawn her own conclusions, and that, if I were willing, she would like to discontinue the engagement. Willing! I felt like a knave; I was humiliated; I suffered, but I could say nothing. It was a different thing to sit and smile into those red-brown eyes of my vision, and to meet Mabel’s dark, truthful ones, and not to be able to explain anything to her; to feel that for her there was no explanation; to know that I was submerged in a stream of life of which she had no part. Then Mabel’s greatness saved me. She saw my suffering, and she did not press me for any explanation, but told me frankly that she must consider our relations as having reverted to their old standing—we must be only as friends; that she herself saw that her interests were more and more tending toward work among the poor, and her imagination absorbed in plans for the general welfare, rather than in the idea of making one man’s home supremely happy, as it undoubtedly should be made. That was about it. It was noble of her, wasn’t it? I had no choice but to accept her decision. That I wished for that very decision was bitterness to me. I see now that even then I wanted the selfish comfort of being a martyr. Mabel is the noblest woman alive; she has become my saint, instead of my wife.’