But she never thought of making a picture of herself, she left such small coquetries to girls who had nothing better to do or to think of. She had her life to live and her books to write! Nevertheless two pairs of eyes found her pleasant to look upon. Dr. Lake’s experiences had opened his eyes to see that Tessa Wadsworth was unlike any woman that he had ever known; she was to him the calm of the moonlight, the fragrance of the spring, and the restfulness of trust.
In these weeks of his trouble, had she been like some other of the Dunellen girls, she would have found her way without pushing into his heart by the wide door that shallow Sue had left ajar.
His heart was open to any attractive woman who would sympathize with him; to any woman who would be glad of what Sue Greyson had thrown away; she might have become aware of this but for her instinctive habit of looking upward to love; even the tenderest compassion mingled with some admiration could not grow into love with her in her present moods; she was too young and asked too much of life for such a possibility.
In these days every man was too far below George Macdonald and Frederick Robertson, unless indeed it might be the new Greek professor; in her secret heart she had begun to wonder if Philip Towne were not something like them both; perhaps because in his sermon that Sunday twilight in the Park he had quoted a “declaration of Robertson’s”—“I am better acquainted with Jesus Christ than I am with any man on earth.”
The words came to her as she stood, to-night, talking with Dr Lake; she was wishing that she might repeat them to him; instead she only replied, “Why shouldn’t I be sharp? You are a man and therefore able to bear it.”
“Not much of a man—or wholly a man. I reckon that is nearer right. I never saw a man yet that a blow from a woman’s little finger wouldn’t knock him over.”
“Not any woman’s finger.”
“Any thing would blow me over to-night. Why do women have to make so many things when they are married?” he asked earnestly.
“To keep the love they have won,” she said with a mischievous laugh. “Don’t you know how soon roses fade after they are rudely torn from the protection and nourishment of the parent stem?”
“Rudely! They flutter, they pant, they struggle to tear themselves loose! Why do you suppose that she prefers Stacey to me?”