"Oh, no. You are the interesting one. You are a study. I should like to help you. I think you are doing yourself an injustice: letting yourself drift as you are. Your fame, alone, won't bring you happiness."
"I'm not expecting happiness."
Mrs. Stewart watched his face, hard set, with it's bitter drop to the right corner of the mouth, and something of pity came to her. "Once," she went on, "it seemed to me that there was a woman who meant for you the same thing as happiness."
"Perhaps." His voice was as hard as before. "That was a very long time ago,—counting by experiences. Why talk of marriage? I don't think I could stand it for an instant; I don't think any woman could stand me. As I once was—that was different."
"Some women are very patient."
"Yes. And then I should go mad until they came out of their deadly patience into something more exciting. A woman's fury would amuse me vastly, I think." He twisted his stick into the rocks, and outlined vague designs in the sandstone. "Why, supposing, for the sake of the argument, that I asked you to marry me, you would, I am sure, consider me a madman to expect you to make such a fool of yourself?"
She flushed slightly. "Merely for the sake of the argument, I don't say that I would do anything of the sort. I might consider it ill-timed, inconsiderate."
"Ah, I beg your pardon, humbly. I realize that deeply. Merely, I said, for the sake of the argument. I want to show you the utter hopelessness of my position. Suppose then, that I asked you that question, what would you tell yourself? That I was a man, young in years, old in experiences, soured in thought and taste, bitter in mind, selfish, a slave to the most egoistic of epicureanisms. A man who considers nothing too sacred for laughter, or too ridiculous for tears. A man who is a perpetual evidence of the corroding influences of flippancy; whose very art, even, is merely a means for amusement. No,—you, clever, shrewd, adaptable woman of the world though you are, would realize at once that to enter into a life-partnership with a man of that sort were to invite immediate misery. Think: the man would be ungovernable, save by his moods; when he should be at home acting as host to a dinner-party he would be tramping the moors in a wild passion for solitude? A man who would perpetually fling at his wife the most mordant of sarcasms, merely for the pleasure they caused his powers of creation. If a biting jest came to him, he would hurl it at his wife, without malice, but because she happened to be present. Not even the cleverest woman in the world can decide between the words and the motive in a case like that. No; this man has fed too much on the lees of disenchantment to be himself aught but a sorry-devil of a jester."
She signed. "You have the modern disease in terrible development—self-analysis. It seems to me to be quite as cruel as vivisection. And I think you exaggerate your vices. After all—I may speak frankly, may I not? I am a woman that has ever kept her eyes open—you represent nothing so very dreadful. You are young, impetuous; you have had the bandages of stern puritanism roughly torn from you, and you have had a little of what the world calls 'your fling!' You realize yourself far too much. You are not one whit worse than others. All men worship, for a time, at the shrine of their animal natures, I suppose. But instead of letting the thought of it all drive you further and further into bitterness, why not resolve to shake off the whole cloak, and put it back into the limbo of thinks henceforth to be avoided?" She paused, and looked at him with a smile. "Get married. I believe, in spite of your fears, that you will make a good husband. Believe me, you will be a much better one than if you had never taught yourself the revolting nausea that the other side of life brings."
"Marry?" he repeated, "why do you harp on that? I tell you, there is no one, no one at all! Unless—" he looked over the breakers to the setting sun, "unless there were a woman somewhere that could understand and forgive. A woman that knew something of the world, of the stings of experience and the hollowness of hope. With a woman like that I might become the owner of the new youth, might sink all these bitternesses, live earnest in ambition and.... But there is no such woman, none...." A sudden light flashed into his eyes, and with passion he continued, "Except-yourself. Yes—you are the only one. You know; you understand. Oh, listen to me, listen! Why tell me that this is a sacrilege, an insult to a memory. Do you suppose I don't know that? I do; I feel it deeply; but I also feel that I am pleading for a helping hand, that I see in you the only chance of safety, that you mean for me a new life, and that I must tell you so now, before the opportunity is gone. Oh, don't tell me I'm a coward—I know that, too, well enough. I confess it; I am a coward, a broken-hearted cur." He groaned, and getting up, began to walk slowly up and down before her. "Is it so impossible? I would—you yourself admitted that hope!—improve. Is there no hope?"