"I think it is all nonsense," she said gravely, as if she were answering a question. Then she turned away again and knitted her brows. Palmerston glanced covertly now and then at her profile, unwillingly aware of its beauty. She was handsome, strikingly, distinguishedly handsome, he said to himself; but there was something lacking. It must be femininity, since he felt the lack and was masculine. He smiled to think how much alike they must appear—he and this very gentlemanly young woman beside him. He thought of her soft felt hat and the cut of her dark-blue coat, and there arose in him a rigidly subdued impulse to offer her a cigar, to ask her if she had a daily paper about her, to—She turned upon him suddenly, her eyes full of tears.
"I am crying!" she exclaimed angrily. "How unspeakably silly!"
Palmerston's heart stopped with that nameless terror which the actual man always experiences when confronted by this phase of the ideal woman. He had been so serene, so comfortable, under the unexpected that there flashed into his mind a vague sense of injury that she should surprise him in this way with the expected. It was inconsiderate, inexcusable; then, with an inconsistency worthy of a better sex, he groped after an excuse for the inexcusable.
"You are very nervous—your journey has tired you—you are not strong," he pleaded.
"I am not nervous," insisted the young woman indignantly. "I have no nerves—I detest them. And I am quite as strong as you are." The young fellow winced. "It is not that. It is only because I cannot have my own way. I cannot make people do as I wish." She spoke with a heat that seemed to dry her tears.
Palmerston sank back and let the case go by default. "If you like that view of it better"—
"I like the truth," the girl broke in vehemently. "I am so tired of talk! Why must we always cover up the facts with a lot of platitudes?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Palmerston lightly. "I suppose there ought to be a skeleton of truth under all we say, but one doesn't need to rattle his bones to prove that he has them."
The girl laughed. Palmerston caught a glimpse of something reassuring in her laugh.
"It might not be cheerful," she admitted, "but it would be honest, and we might learn to like it. Besides, the truth is not always disagreeable."