TIRED WINGS
In spite of the fact that she had laughed at Graham's blindness in falling into her trap, Molly Lafond felt enough curiosity to induce her to enter into several conversations with him during the course of that afternoon. He sat by the door whistling. Out in the sun the men cut logs, notched ends, heaved and pushed. The girl alternated between personal encouragement of the workers, and a curious examination of the idler.
Graham interested her because he puzzled her. The young man no longer held to the quizzical and cynical attitude he had assumed in the morning, but neither did he at once manifest that personal interest which she had imagined inevitable. He caught at her statement that she had done nothing but "read, read, read." In the course of twenty minutes he had made her most keenly aware of her deficiencies, and that without the display of any other motive than a frank desire to discuss the extent of her knowledge. He opened to her fields whose existence she had never suspected; he showed her that she had but superficially examined those she had entered. Authors she had much admired he disposed of cavalierly, and in their stead substituted others of whom she had never heard.
"I like Bulwer," she remarked, secure in her classic because it had been the only one of Sweeney's collection to come in a set and bound in brown leather.
"Bulwer, yes," said Graham, pulling his little moustache, and speaking, as his habit sometimes was, more to himself than to his companion. "We all go through that stage, but we get over it after awhile. You see, he's superficial and awfully pedantic. There is much beauty in it, too. I remember in one of his novels—I forget which—there is a picture of a child tossing her ball skyward, with eyes turned upward to the skies, that is worth a good deal."
"It's in What Will He Do with It?" cried Molly, aglow at being able to interpolate correctly.
"Yes," assented Graham, indifferently. "It has something to do with youth, I think. Before our critical judgment grows up and finds him out, there is a peculiar elevation about Bulwer's themes and treatment. His world is blown; but it is big, and his figures have a certain scornful nobility about them. If I were to compete with the gentleman under discussion," he concluded, with a slight laugh, "I would say that he throws upon the true gold of youthful ideals, hopes, and dreams, the light of his own tinsel."
Molly was subdued, humbled. She was deprived at a stroke of all her weapons. For the first time she found herself looking up to a man, and wondering whether she could ever meet him on terms of equality. She caught herself covertly scrutinizing Graham to see if he too realized his advantage. He was genuinely interested; that was all. He seemed to take it for granted that she was already on his level. This encouraged her somewhat.
Whenever she again joined the group of sweating men at work on her house, she felt subtly that she was returning from a far country. She had brought back with her something new. The nature of the conversation had lifted her to the contemplation of fresh possibilities of human intercourse. With a defiant toss of the head she indulged herself to the extent of imagining several Bulwer-like conversations, in which she dealt out brilliant generalities to the universal applause. It was the first flight her wings had essayed; the first charm not merely physical that she had experienced with one of the other sex. She felt she was going to like this man Graham.
And yet that very elation was one of the reasons why, after dinner in the "hotel," she walked with Billy Knapp, although Graham was plainly waiting for her. It had been her first flight; her wings were tired. The reaction had come.