“Kit, you don’t understand women,” she said with a quaver in her voice. “Perhaps I mean girls, a girl, this girl! Can’t you see how one may be defeated in victory? How little it means to be pretty, clever, rich, admired, when one is all alone? Father is a dear to me, but he can’t play the game of politics for such high stakes as those he is out for and have much time to spare for his girl. Well! I pretend a lot, but I don’t mind my old pal’s knowing that I’m just plain girl, and no goddess, not even an ambitious woman at heart. Daphne Woods stirs in me everything that I fight down. It doesn’t do to let it poke up its head to be fed when I can’t feed it! It’s too lovely in here, too ideal to be good for me. Oh, Kit, take me home!”
Kit’s heart beat faster. Helen was intoxicating with her eyes downcast, her voice low and vibrant. Her simple, direct appeal moved him by the pathos of its revelation of sweetness where he had known only hardness; of weakness where he had thought there was only self-reliant strength.
“Why, Nell, dear,” he cried, “I didn’t know you felt like this! Spring in the woods always sets me off, too. Funny how all human beings are casting about for something, they’re not sure just what. Nature gets us going, doesn’t it? October is as bad as May, in another way. Yet it is a sweet sorrow, don’t you think? Something like parting! Sure, I’ll take you home. You’re probably tired, too. Lunch will be ready by the time we get there.”
Helen swung back again in her saddle and turned Jack-of-Spades sharply. Then she looked hard at Kit and laughed, her softened mood flung from her.
“It’s hard telling, Christopher Carrington, whether you’re a bit clever, or more than a bit stupid,” she said, and rode ahead of him, Jack-of-Spades on a gallop, toward the end of the woods.
Kit went up to his room to get out of his riding clothes into his daily attire. He was slow about it; considering hard, puzzled, interested, confused in thought, clearer in impressions than he liked to admit.
“Well,” he ended his meditations, arousing himself with difficulty to be aware of the knot of his tie, “it makes you feel like a yellow dog to think it, but what am I to think? Looks as if Aunt Anne knew; probably women always know. But why in thunder——? Nell is strictly and within bounds of statement a winner. There are such a lot of fellows—I never have altogether liked Nell; that is, I never fell for her. Worldly women strike me about the way an angel stock broker would hit you. But apparently I haven’t got her right. I suppose it’s hard for mere man to know ’em, fathom ’em. A kaleidoscope is stable compared to ’em! Nell isn’t so worldly after all. She’s capable of unambitious attachments, it seems. I suppose nice ones are cut on the same pattern in their general lines. They all want affection, children, the things best worth while.”
Kit went downstairs feeling benignant. He was human, and though not as conceited as most of his age and sex, there was no denying that he found it pleasant to suspect that a clever, beautiful young creature turned toward him, innocently betraying that she could love him. It gave Kit a calm, uplifted, vague sense of pitiful but delightful things enveloping him. It perturbed him, of course; what he should do about it must be faced, but in the meantime there was no getting away from the fact that he liked it. He was fine enough to attribute to Helen the maternal instinct that led her from the plaudits of society toward shadowy little hands, impatiently pat-a-caking for her to clasp them and draw them forth into the world.
As Kit came down the stairs Helen’s pretty laughter rang out to him. It was her old mocking laughter, but this time it did not, as usual, jar on him. He knew that often she did not laugh; she had shown him this. He did not suspect that she had been describing their ride to his aunt, who found Helen as entertaining as a Shaw play, and touching lightly and cleverly upon his failure to take the good things that the gods, or rather the goddess, provided.
He paused at the hall table to take up and look over a pamphlet which lay there, paying no attention to remarks which Miss Carrington was making in train of Helen’s laugh.