Dumaresque agreed that it was true of any fancy, to one of fickle nature.
“No, it is not fickleness,” she insisted. “Have you no boyish loves of the past hidden away, each in their separate nook of memory? Confess! Are you and the world any the worse for them? Certainly not. They each contributed a certain amount towards the education of the emotions. Well; is my education to be neglected because you fear I shall injure the daintily-bound books in the human library? I shall not, Loris. I only flutter the leaves a little and glance at the pictures they offer, but I never covet one of them for my own, and never read one to the finale, hence––”
Dumaresque left soon after for an extended artistic pilgrimage into northern Africa, and people began to understand that there would be no wedding. The engagement had only been made to comfort the dowager.
Judithe de Caron regretted his departure more than she had regretted anything since the death of the woman who had been a mother to her. There was no one else with whom she could be so candid––no man who inspired her with the same confidence. She compared him with the 104 American, and told herself how vastly her friend was the superior.
Had McVeigh been one of the scholarly soldiers of Europe, such as she had since known––men of breadth and learning, she could have understood her own infatuation. But he was certainly provincial, and not at all learned. She had met many cadets since, and had studied them. They knew their military tactics––the lessons of their schools. They flirted with the grissettes, and took on airs; they drank and had pride in emptying more glasses and walking straighter afterwards than their comrades. They were very good fellows, but heavens! how shallow they were! So he must have been. She tried to remember a single sentence uttered by him containing wisdom of any sort whatever––there had not been one. His silences had been links to bind her to him. His glances had been revelations, and his words had been only: “I adore you.”
So many men had said the same thing since. It seemed always the sort of thing men said when conversation flagged. But in those earlier days she had not known that, hence the fact that she––well, she knew now!
Twice she had met that one-time bondwoman, Kora, and the meeting left her thoughtful, and not entirely satisfied with herself.
How wise she could be in advice to that pretty butterfly! How plainly she could work out a useful life to be followed by––some one else!
Her more thoughtful moods demanded: Why not herself? Her charities of the street, her subscriptions to worthy funds, her patronage of admirable institutions, all these meant nothing. Dozens of fashionables and would-be fashionables did the same. It was expected of them. 105 Those charities opened a door through which many entered the inner circles.
She had fitful desires to do the things people did not expect. She detested the shams of life around her in that inner circle. She felt at times she would like to get them all under her feet––trample them down and make room for something better; but for what? She did not know. She was twenty-one, wealthy, her own mistress, and was tired of it all. When she drove past laughing Kora on the avenue she was more tired of it than ever.