Lorrimer looked at her and laughed.
"And so do I," he said.
"Oh! if only I could unsay that!" thought Ideala; but the word had gone forth, and was already garnered against her.
Then came an awful moment for her—the moment of going and paying. It was hateful to let him pay for her lunch, but she could not help it. She was seized with one of those fits of shyness which made it just a degree less painful to allow it than to make the effort to prevent it.
They returned to Lorrimer's room and pored together over a catalogue, looking up the books she wanted. When they had found their names and numbers Lorrimer sent for them from the library, but it was too late to do anything that day, and so she rose to go.
Lorrimer walked with her to the station, and saw her into the train. On the way they talked of little children. He loved them as she did.
"A friend of mine," he said, "has the most beautiful child I ever saw.
Just to look at it makes me feel a better man."
CHAPTER XVIII.
In the days that followed a singular change came over Ideala. No external circumstance affected her. She moved like one in a dream; thought had ceased for her; all life was one delicious sensation, and at times she could not bear the delight of it in silence. She would tell it in low songs in the twilight; she would make her piano speak it in a hundred chords: and it would burst from her in some sudden glow of enthusiasm that made people wonder—the apparent cause being too slight to account for it. While this lasted nothing hurt her. She saw the sufferings of others unmoved. She met her husband's brutalities with a smiling countenance, and bore the physical discomfort of a bad sprain without much consciousness of pain. And she knew nothing of time, and never asked herself to what she owed this joy.
The utter forgetfulness of everything that came upon her when she was alone was almost incredible. One evening she spent two hours in walking a distance she might easily have done in forty minutes. She had been to see a sick person, and when she found herself in the fresh air, after having spent some time in a small, close room, the dream-like feeling came over her, and her spirit was uplifted with inexpressible gladness. The summer air was sweet and warm, a light rain was falling, and she took off her hat and wandered on, looking up, but noting nothing, and singing Schubert's "Hark! hark! the lark," to herself softly as she came. A man standing at a cottage door begged her to go in and shelter. She looked at him, and her face was radiant—the rain-drops sparkled on her hair. He was only a working man, "clay—and common clay," but the light in her eyes passed through him, and the memory of her stayed with him, a thing apart from his daily life, held sacred, and not to be described. A man might live a hundred years and never see a woman look like that.