“Perhaps!” she replied.
The Philosopher made a particularly hideous O of his unbeautiful mouth at that moment, as he discharged a well-nigh perfect smoke-ring from its cavity.
“The noble and high-minded Jack scarcely answers to your requirements,” he said.
“No, poor fellow!” and she smiled. “I believe he has always been more or less hard up. His father put him into some great engineering works, but of course he had to pay to be taken at all—he was not paid. But he learned everything he could. Now he’s quite pleased he’s joined the Army—you see he’s paid there!—and has his food and clothes as well—so he’s happy and satisfied.”
“Fortunate youth!” said the Philosopher, yawning. “And doubly fortunate to have secured so much interest in his doings as you bestow upon him!”
She was silent.
The Philosopher continued making smoke-rings and she wished he would leave off. It was unreasonable of her to feel irritated with him, and yet she could not help it. He, on his part, was conscious of having come up against an obstacle in his mental plans of conquest,—a soft obstacle, something like a sand-bag in the path of a bullet. On that particular winter afternoon he had purposed “making a dash for it” as he had said to himself, and risking an attempt at love-making. He had thought of various ways of doing it, more or less approved. It was a cold, bleak day—a day that was enough to make gentle ladies shiver and draw near the fire,—if she had drawn near, he would have essayed—yes, he thought he would have essayed slipping an arm round her waist as he had done on that occasion when he had pricked or (as he would have expressed it), “lacerated” his hand among the rose-bushes, and she had “kissed the place and made it well.” Yes, she had actually done that! And now, little by little, a curious, imperceptible shadow had arisen like a dividing wall, so that she appeared to be on one side and he on the other, and he felt by a strange, almost sullen instinct that were he to “lacerate” his hand ever so severely, he would not be favoured by the light, soft touch of those rosy lips again. Now, what mood possessed her, he wondered? What fantastic feminine vagary had made her thus capricious? Wrapped in a thick hide of intellectual egotism the Philosopher could not see that he was in any sense to blame.
Had any one ventured to tell him that his ingrained selfishness and utter indifference to the feelings of any other human entity than his own, had profoundly affected the Sentimentalist and moved her to reluctant aversion, tempered with pity, he would have been virtuously indignant. For he had his own peculiar methods of estimating his own conduct.
“I! I, selfish!” he would have exclaimed. “I, who am always trying to amuse and please everybody! I give up my own wishes constantly in order to suit other people! I am a perpetual entertainment to my friends when they are too dull-witted to entertain themselves! I am really one of the most unselfish and good-natured of men! I never ‘bore’ anybody!”
And he would have argued that to stay on week after week in an extremely comfortable country house with all his food provided, was really a magnanimous condescension on his part, inasmuch as he was assisting a very irritable old gentleman to pursue literary work which interested him, and at the same time impressing by his various qualifications a very romantic and idealistic little lady who, unfortunately for herself, had an idea that all clever men must be worth knowing.