“John—is occupied more with Consolidated Iron than he is with my hair. Nonsense, mother! Why be tragic about it? John is kind, I’m contented. Why” (lightly) “should I go into heroics because our romance is not so gossamer but that I can pull it to pieces and put it together again? I’m thirty-two. Yet”—she added, laying down her cup—“I seem as greedy for romance as a débutante in the first season. I,” reminiscently, “was rather a nice débutante, eh, mummy?”
“You were delicious!” said Mrs. Loring with enthusiasm. “Ambrose Fayerweather was saying only yesterday”——
“Does Mr. Fayerweather still call here?”
Mrs. Loring’s smooth cheeks flushed. “He is a very old friend,” said she, busy with the cream jug. “And he says the girls these last few years can’t”——
“Hold a candle to those a dozen years ago,” finished Lucia.
“Why, yes! How did you know?”
“He’s said it to me—and other old galants—every time I’ve seen him in the last decade. Well, mummy! I’m going up to lie down for a little. I hope,” wistfully, “I haven’t blued you up, dear? I’m afraid I’m rather”——
“You’re in need of rest!” replied Mrs. Loring briskly. “Run along and get it, my dear. John said the right thing, after all!”
She smiled brightly at her daughter; but when Lucia had reached the landing, stood gazing after her. “She thinks too much,” said her mother with a sigh; “it’s a bad habit for a woman.”
Lucia, upstairs, on a couch luxurious with pillows, was still thinking; that is, always the same thing. Why would the figures always balance each other, she wondered wearily? Life was one long sum in algebra—or subtraction: the signs changed, the quantities cancelled, and—X was zero. Everything seemed to be known; so distinct and matter-of-fact. When she married John Gwynne, she had loved him—passionately; but also reasoningly. She had taken into consideration that the passion would dim, but that a certain comfortable comradeship would take its place. The passion had dimmed; the comradeship had taken its place. And the illusions which Lucia had not possessed had remained unattacked. What was there then to quarrel with? Her house, from which she had anticipated as much satisfaction as care, had given her the two in equal proportion. Her child, who she had known would thrill and agonize her alike, had done both, with impartial intensity. Her art, which she had been willing to abandon in exchange for certain other delights, had been indeed compensated for by those delights; it had been a fair exchange and no more. No more, for that would have been to spoil the law; to dig unevennesses in the groove—which, for Lucia, seemed eternally straight.