“Well, I should just farther think I should! T-errifically disappointed! Squelched. Flum-macked. Laid out flat. For the hour, that is. I couldn’t go on being worried, for all the fortunes on earth. It will be a case of adapting myself to a new sort of happiness—c’est tout! That’s easily done.”
The joy of the lover, the keen, appraising interest of the artist, were both eloquent in Martin’s glance as he considered her eloquent face.
“Yes! One cannot imagine Grizel less than happy and content. And yet to an ordinary nature, your life during these last years, for all its luxuries, would have seemed a poor thing. You have made your happiness by managing to love a very unlovable character. It’s a big feat, Grizel; a very big feat!”
Grizel rubbed her nose, a slow, thoughtful rub with a raised forefinger. The homely movement seemed ridiculously out of character with the ethereal form and the transparent hand, on which the firelight woke the gleam of flawless diamonds.
“Can a ‘feat’ be something for which you have never tried? I never try to love any one. Either I love ’em, or—I don’t bother! Disliking, hating,—it’s too much trouble! I wipe ’em out... Same way with things; therefore, as a logical conclusion nothing remains but what I do like. Therefore,—logical inference again!—one must be happy, because there’s nothing to make one un-happy. Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it?”
Martin’s lip curled.
“I wonder,” he said. “I wonder what Katrine would say if you propounded that theory to her? I fancy, poor girl, that the very opposite of your programme would come nearer to her outlook on life. She finds it as difficult to be happy as you do to be miserable. And yet—she’s had her chance!”
“Martin, she has not! What chance has she had? Tucked away in this dark old house, with you shut up in your study all day, and in your moods all night? My old Buddy loves me; it’s not an ordinary form of loving perhaps, but she does! I’m more to her than the whole world. And I’ve had my fling... Poor old Katrine has had no love, and no fling, nothing but duty, and brotherly affection, and home-made clothes. It’s enough to make any woman snap. I’m glad she is discontented. I’ll make her more discontented still, before I’ve done. She’s pot-bound, like your stale old ferns, and needs uprooting, and shaking, and planting in fresh, strong earth. Then she’ll bloom, and you, poor bat! will be amazed at what a fine big bloom it is. It isn’t a sign of greatness, Martin, to blink in the sun, because one is too lazy too move, and is content to bask, and be stroked, and lick up cream. That’s me! Katrine is bigger; it needs more to fill her life, but she’s only just beginning to grow. You don’t know, Martin, how sweet a woman Katrine is going to be!”
Martin smiled; a smile of serene, unshakable conviction. He knew his sister. She was a good girl, well meaning, if a little difficult by nature; he, of all people on earth, would be the last to deny Katrine’s good points, but—to compare her with Grizel, to account to her a greatness of nature above that of the sweetest, kindliest, most loving of women,—that was a flight of fancy beyond even his well-trained powers!
“And who,” queried Grizel, with sudden energy, “is Katrine thinking of, when she sits smiling into space, and giving silly answers to obvious questions, and putting horrid sugar into my tea,—tell me that, if you can! It is your profession in life to study men and women, and analyse their thoughts. What do you make of the mystery of the woman upon your hearth?”