The ungentleness of the answer jarred upon the girl's heart. Leigh had suffered such miserable wrongs at the hand of fate, that surely he was deserving of all consideration and compassion. His bodily disabilities made him more helpless and piteous than a lonely, deserted child. "Tell me all," she said. "It was so good of you to bring him here. I felt quite proud of you when I saw you coming with him. Many men would have been afraid to trust so uncouth a man with so unpleasant a secret into this room of a Thursday." She spoke to encourage Hanbury, by anticipating in part his account of the generous thing she fancied he had done.
He twisted and turned uneasily on his chair. Whatever Dora or anyone else might think of him, he was not going to pose in plumes that were not his by right. It was very gratifying in one sense that she should give him credit for such extravagant, such Quixotic good nature; but she must not be allowed to run away with the story.
"The fact is, Dora," said he in a tone of deliberation and dissatisfaction, "I did not bring him here of my own free will. Indeed, I do not know how you could imagine I would invite such a man. I found him contemplating a paragraph for the papers, and he promised he would say nothing about what had occurred if I would introduce him to you. He seems to have conceived a romantic interest in you, because of your likeness to some one he knows." Later this evening he should tell her all about this "some one."
"I see," she said, her spirits declining. It was not out of good nature or generosity, but cowardice, moral cowardice, Jack had brought Leigh. The principle which had made Jack flee from Welbeck Place after sending Leigh for the cab, and then made him fly back there again when he learned that the little man knew their names, had forced him against his will to bring Leigh to her mother's At home. She was in the most indulgent and forgiving of humours, but--but--but--"Oh, Jack, I am so sorry!" was all she could think of saying. She was sorry for him, for John Hanbury, who either was not, or would not be, too big to be troubled by such paltry fears, and irritated by such paltry annoyances.
"Sorry! Sorry for what?" he cried. He gathered from her tone and manner that she was not speaking out fully. He could not guess what was in her mind. He had a little lecture or exhortation prepared to deliver her, and in addition to the unpleasantness of not knowing exactly what she meant when she said she was sorry, he had the confusing and exasperating sense of repression, of not being able to get on the ground he intended occupying.
She did not speak for a while. She was looking out into the dark blue air of the street. She had formed a high ideal of what he, her hero, ought to be, nearly was. But now and then, often, he did not reach the standard she had raised. Her ideal was the man of noble thought certainly, but he should still more be the man of noble action. She would have laid down her life freely in what she believed to be a good cause, and to her mind the noblest cause in which a woman could die would be for a noble man whom she loved. She believed the place of woman was by the side of man, not independent of man. She held that in all matters man and wife should be, to use words that had been employed in acts, to think of which rent her heart with agony, one and undivisible. She regarded strong-minded women as wrong-minded women. Strength and magnanimity were the attributes of men; love and gentleness of women. She wanted this man beside her to shine bright in the eyes of men by reason of his great and rare gifts. No one doubted his abilities as a man; she wanted him to treat his abilities as only the foundation of his character. She wanted not only to know that he possessed great gifts and precious powers, but to feel as well that he was fit to be a god. She yearned to pass her life by the side of a man who could force the world to listen to his words, and fill the one pedestal in her earthly temple. She wanted him to be a hero and a conqueror in the face of the world, and she wanted to give him the whole loyal worship of her woman's heart, that she might live always in the only attitude which rests a woman's spirit, the attitude of giving service of the hand and largess of the heart, and homage of the soul. She wanted to give this man all her heart and soul unceasingly. To give him everything that was hers to give, under Heaven.
It was necessary to make some reply, and she had none ready. In the pause she had not been thinking. She had been seeing visions, dreaming dreams, from which occupations thought is always absent.
He became still more uneasy. Her hand was in his. He pressed it slightly, to recall her attention to him, "What are you sorry for, Dora? What are you thinking of, dear? Are you angry with me still?"
She started without turning her eyes away from the blue duskness of the street, and in a tone of wonderful tenderness and sadness, said:
"I don't know exactly what I was thinking of, Jack. The evening is so fresh and still it is not necessary for one to think. Angry with you, dear! Oh, no! Oh, no! Angry with you for what?"