As it was he must give them their chance and he knew of only one way to do it. This point settled he dismissed it from his mind and, with a slight sigh, permitted his harassed thoughts to lead him where they seemed always now inclined to lead him when permitted—back to the young girl he had known only a few hours, but in whose company it seemed to him that he had already lived a century.
He was not a man given to easy friendships, not a man in whom sensations were easily stirred. Under ordinary circumstances, perhaps, neither the youthful beauty of this girl, nor her talents and accomplishments had stirred him to more than an amiably impersonal interest. He had known many women and had been friends with a few. But on his part the friendships had not been sentimental.
Women of all sorts and conditions he had known: fashionable idlers, professional women, domesticated women; women with ideas, women without them, busy women with leisure for mischief, mischievous women whose business was leisure, happy women, unhappy ones, calm ones, restless ones, clever ones, stupid ones and their even more irritating sisters who promised to amount to something and never did, all these varieties of the species he had known, but never a woman like this.
Usually he could place a woman after seeing her move and hearing her speak. He could only place Karen on a social par with any woman he had ever known, and he was afraid she didn't belong there, because well-born German Mädchens don't interne themselves in nun-like seclusion far from Vaterland, Vater, and maternal apron-strings, with intervals of sallying forth into the world for a few months' diversion as a professional actress on the stage.
At least Guild had never heard of any girls who did such things. But there remained the chance, of course, that Karen Girard was a perfectly new type to him.
One fact was evident; her father was a Prussian officer and belonged to the Prussian aristocracy. But gentlemen of these castes do not permit their daughters the freedom that Karen enjoyed.
There was a mystery about the matter, probably not an agreeable one. Antecedents, conditions and facts did not agree. There was no logic in her situation.
Guild realized this. And at the same time he realized that he had never liked any woman as much—had never come to care for any woman as easily, as naturally, and as quickly as he had come to care for Karen Girard.
It stirred him now to remember that this young girl had responded, frankly, fearlessly, naturally; had even met him more than half-way with a sweet sincerity and confidence that touched him again as he thought of it.
Truly he had never looked into such honest eyes, or into lovelier ones,—two clear, violet wells of light. And Truth, who abides in wells, could not have chosen for her dwelling place habitations more suitable.