She started, and pulled herself up in a moment. “Oh, are you there, papa? No, I didn’t see you. I didn’t think of any one being here. Well, they are gone. Everybody came to see Frances off, as you divined. She bore up very well; but, of course, it was a little sad for her, leaving everything she knows.”
“You were crying a minute ago, Constance.”
“Was I? Oh, well, that was nothing. Girls cry, and it doesn’t mean much. You know women well enough to know that.”
“Yes, I know women—enough to say the ordinary things about them,” said Waring; “but perhaps I don’t know you, which is of far more consequence just now.”
“There is not much in me to know,” said the girl in a light voice. “I am just like other girls. I am apt to cry when I see people crying. Frances sobbed—like a little foolish thing; for why should she cry? She is going to see the world. Did you ever feel, when you came here first, a sort of horror seize upon you, as if—as if—as if you were lost in a savage wilderness, and would never see a human face again?”
“No; I cannot say I ever felt that.”
“No, to be sure,” cried Constance. “What ridiculous nonsense I am talking! A savage wilderness! with all these houses about, and the hotels on the beach. I mean—didn’t you feel as if you would like to run violently down a steep place into the sea?” Then she stopped, and laughed. “It was the swine that did that.”
“It has never occurred to me to take that means of settling matters; and yet I understand you,” he said gravely. “You have made a mistake. You thought you were philosopher enough to give up the world; and it turns out that you are not. But you need not cry, for it is not too late. You can change your mind.”
“I—change my mind! Not for the world, papa! Do you think I would give them the triumph of supposing that I could not do without them, that I was obliged to go back? Not for the world.”
“I understand the sentiment,” he said. “Still, between these two conditions of mind, it is rather unfortunate for you, my dear. I do not see any middle course.”