Philip hesitated, and again looked back.
'I see,' said Miss Durham; 'you are afraid of stepping out of your cage.'
'Not at all,' answered Philip, flushing. 'I am prepared to go to the end of this trough in the mountains with you, but I greatly doubt seeing much from the further end.'
'Well—if we see nothing, we can talk. Have you looked about you much since we began the ascent?'
'The time has flown,' said Philip, looking at his watch. 'It seems to me but a few minutes since.'
The long dreary valley or basin in which lay the lake was apparently closed at the end by a hill surmounted by a cross or flagstaff. The road ran along the north side of the lake, without a tree to shade it. The party behind, when they came to the restaurant, could not fail to see them if they continued along the road, and might follow, or await them there.
Philip walked on, but no longer gave Artemisia Durham his arm. He saw far away in the rear Mrs. Sidebottom signalling with her parasol; but whether to him, or to the Labarte girls who were dispersed in the morass at the end of the lake, picking butterwort, soldanella, and primula, he could not tell.
His eyes were on the ground. He was thinking of his companion, what a strange life hers must be, incomprehensible to him. He felt how, if he were thrown into it, he would not know how to strike out and hold his chin above water. At the same time his heart beat fast with a wild vain desire for a freer life than that of commerce.
The restraints to which he had been subjected had compressed and shaped him, as the Chinese lady's shoe compresses and shapes her foot—but the pressure had been painful; it had marked him, but the marks were ever sensitive. The ancient robe of the Carmelite fathers was of white wool barred with black, and they pretended that they derived this habit from the mantle of Elijah, which he had dropped as he was being carried up to heaven, and the mantle had touched as it fell the spokes of the chariot of fire in which he ascended, and was scorched in stripes. Philip, and many another successful man of business who has been exalted to a position of comfort and warmth, has the inner garment of his soul scarred by the wheels of the chariot in which he has mounted. Philip felt his own awkwardness, his want of ease in other society than that narrow circle in which he had turned, his inability to move with that freedom and confidence which characterizes those born and reared in generous society. Even with this girl—this Bohemian—he was as one walking and talking with chains to his feet and a gag to his tongue. She was right; he was born to be at ease everywhere, to be able everywhere to walk upright, and to look around him; he had been put in a cramping position, tied hand and foot, and his head set in such a vice as photographers employ to give what they consider support and steadiness, and he was distorted, stiffened, contracted. Had his life been happy? He had never accounted it so—it had been formal at the solicitor's desk, and it was formal in the factory. Was man made and launched into life to be a piece of clockwork? He had thought, acted, lived an automaton life, and taken his pleasure in measuring glasses, never in full and free draughts.
'Have you had a happy existence?' he asked thoughtfully.'