Constance thought of her own five thousand dollars. She would almost like to lend it to him, though, of course, that was out of the question. Still, there would be no harm in offering moral support. "If I were a man," she said, "and had faith in my own abilities, I wouldn't remain in a subordinate position a moment longer than was really necessary."
In response to this note of sympathy Emil opened his bag and produced two sticks of chocolate. He broke them apart and presented one to his companion. He also exhibited a compressible metal drinking-cup, which he filled from the bubbling brook. A crow cawed in the pine copse as though to call attention to the idyl, but only the two philosophers on the fallen tree-trunk were within hearing of his note of irony, and they regarded it merely as an added rural charm.
"Would you object to my smoking my pipe?"
"Not in the least. My father was devoted to his pipe."
Another bond of sympathy. Or at least an indication to the swain that here was a maiden who was no spoil-sport and who would not have to be wooed by the sacrifice of personal comfort. Moreover, it was not lost on him that she was an attractive-looking maiden, and that her voice was well modulated and refined. Yet he was not thinking of her, but merely of her sex in general, when he said, "Besides, I hope to be married some day. How could I support a wife in Benham on one thousand dollars a year in the manner in which I should wish her to live?"
Constance could not answer this question, and did not try. It belonged to the category of remarks which were to be treated by a single woman as monologues. But she was keenly interested. One thousand dollars a year did not seem to her a very pitiful sum for a young couple just starting in life. She had heard her father say that when he married her mother he had only a hundred dollars in the world, and no assurance of practice. But that was not in Benham. She had already divined that Benham was to be a land of surprises. At all events she could not help admiring Mr. Stuart's chivalric attitude toward his future wife. His ambition was obviously quickened by the thought of his future sweetheart, whoever she might be; which was an agreeable tribute to her own sex, suggesting susceptibility to sentiment.
"Yes, I'd have been married before this if Toler & Company had not, as you say, kept me down," he continued, pensively, blowing a ring of smoke to emphasize his mood. "When after working hard all day I go to my room at night and take up my violin, I often think that if I could play to the woman I loved, instead of to the blank wall, how much happier I should be. But I suppose some of my friends would declare that I was a fool to desire a yoke around my neck before fate placed it there."
His own readiness to relieve the stress of his confession by a sardonic turn counteracted the constraint which his intimate avowal had aroused. Incredible as it is that a man in his sober senses should offer himself to a woman the first time he beholds her, no woman is altogether unaware that he is liable to do so. A modest and thoughtful young girl shrinks from precipitate progress in affairs of the heart. Obviously the ground was less dangerous than it had for a moment appeared, but Constance sought the avenue of escape which his allusion to music offered. Besides it pleased her to hear that he was æsthetic in his interests.
"You play on the violin, then?" she asked. "I envy anybody who has the talent and the opportunity for anything of that sort. I sing a little, but my voice is uncultivated, for in Colton there was no one to tell us our faults." The earnest gleam in her fine dark eyes seemed to second the fresh enthusiasm of her tone.
The warning scream of the whistle, not the voice of the crow, broke in at this point on their preoccupation with each other. This was the romantic episode from which their acquaintance dated—an episode which might readily have signified nothing. But on the other hand, it naturally supplied to the party of the second part a fair field of memory in which her imagination might wander when stirred by the subsequent attentions of this young knight with sympathy for the unfortunate, resolute confidence in his own abilities, generous views in regard to matrimony and a sensitive, æsthetic soul. For Emil Stuart sought her out at once, visited her at her lodgings and gave unmistakable signs that his purpose was both honorable and definite. Within six months she knew from his own lips that he wished to make her his wife. She took another three in which to conquer her scruples and maidenly disinclination to be won too easily. Why should she not yield? He was her first lover, and she loved him, and he declared with fervor that he adored her. Contact with the conditions of a large city had shown her unmistakably that only after years of struggle could she hope to be more than a mere hand-maiden in the work of education, and that during the early period of her employment, if not indeed for life, the hours of work would be long and confining and her pleasures few. Here was a companion who would provide her with a home, and upon whom the tenderness of her woman's nature could be freely bestowed. It was the old, old story, she said to herself, but was there a better one?