"Neither can I," she answered.
"You ought to have confessed you had written it, or have said nothing about it," I told her, frankly.
"Yes," she assented. "Not doing so was a kind of falsehood. But neither course occurred to me." And then she explained: "I never see the meaning of what I write till the light of public opinion is turned upon it, or some cold critic comes and damps my enthusiasm. When a subject possesses me, and shapes itself into verse, it boils in my brain, and my pen is the only way of escape for it, the one safety-valve I have to ease the pressure. And I can't judge of its merits myself for long enough after it is written, because the boiling begins again, you see, whenever I read it, and then there is such a steam of feeling I cannot see to think. For the verses, however poor they appear to you, contain for me the whole poem as I have it in my inner consciousness. It is beautiful as it exists there, but the power of expression is lacking. If only I could make you feel it as I do, I should be the greatest poet alive."
It was a trick of Ideala's to miss the true import of a thing—often an act of her own—until the occasion had passed, or to see it strangely distorted, as she frequently did at this time—though that gradually ceased altogether as she grew older; but it was this peculiarity, so strongly marked in her, which first helped me to comprehend a curious trait there is in the moral nature of men and women while it is still in process of development. Many men, Frenchmen especially, have thought the trait peculiar to women. La Bruyére declares that "Women have no principles as men understand the word. They are guided by their feelings, and have full faith in their guide. Their notions of propriety and impropriety, right and wrong, they get from the little world embraced by their affections." And Alphonse Karr says: "Never attempt to prove anything to a woman: she believes only according to her feelings. Endeavour to please and persuade: she may yield to the person who reasons with her, not to his arguments"—opinions, however, which apply to men as often as not, and only to the young, impressible, passionate, and imperfectly educated of either sex. But there is scarcely a generalisation for one sex which does not apply equally to the other, so perfectly alike in nature are men and women. The difference is only in circumstance. Reverse the position of the sexes, require men to be modest and obedient, and they will develop every woman's weakness in a generation. If a man would comprehend a woman, let him consider himself; the woman has the same joys, sorrows, hopes, fears, pleasures, and passions—expressed in another way, that is all. But, certainly, for a long time Ideala's guide was her feeling about a thing. I have often said to her, when at last she decided to take some step which had obviously been the only course open to her from the first: "But, Ideala, why have you hesitated so long? You knew it was right to begin with."
"Yes," she would answer, "I knew it was right; but I have only just now felt that it was."
She had never thought of acting on the mere cold knowledge. For feeling to knowledge, in young minds, is like the match to a fire laid in a grate; knowledge without feeling being as cheerless and impotent as the fire unlit.
CHAPTER XII.
A little while after that evening at the Palace we learnt to our dismay that Ideala's husband had taken a house in one of the rough manufacturing districts, to which he meant to remove immediately. Business was the pretext, as he had money in some great ironworks there; but I think the nearness of a large city, where a man of his stamp would be able to indulge all his tastes without let or hindrance, had something to do with the change.
Ideala had kept up very well while she was among us, but soon after she went away we gathered from the tone of her letters that there was a change in her which alarmed us. Her health, which had hitherto been splendid, seemed to be giving way, and it was evident that her new position did not please her, and that, even after she had been there for months, she continued to feel herself "a stranger in a strange land." The people were uncongenial, and I think it likely they regarded Ideala's oddities with some suspicion, and did not take to her as we had done. She had not that extreme youth which had been her excuse when she came to us, and which, somehow, we had not missed when she lost it; and her habitual reserve on all matters that immediately concerned herself must also have tended to make her unpopular with people whose predominant quality was "an eminent curiosity."
"They are far above books," Ideala wrote to Claudia; "what they study is each other, and in the pursuit of this branch of knowledge they are indefatigable. When they can get nothing out of me about myself, they question me about my husband and friends, and it is in vain that I answer them with those words of wisdom (I feel sure I misquote them)— 'All that is mine own is yours till the end of my life; but the secret of my friend is not mine own'—they persevere.