Geoffrey paused.
"Go on," said Margaret, turning her eyes slowly from looking at the running water without seeing it. She said very quietly: "Go on; I like to hear you talk." The spell of his presence was upon her. There was the soft look in her eyes of a woman who is beginning to find it pleasant to be in some way compelled, and for a moment her tones, looks, and words seemed to be all a part of a musical chord to interpret her response to his influence. Geoffrey looked away. The time for trusting himself to look into the eyes that seemed very sweet in their new softness had not arrived. For the first time he felt certain that he had affected her favorably. Almost involuntarily he took a couple of steps to the water's edge and back again.
"What is there more to say?" said he, smiling. "We neither hope very much nor fear very much nowadays. Men who have no scientific discovery in view or who can not sufficiently idealize their lives gradually cease expecting to be very happy. To men like myself religions are a more or less developed form of delusion, bringing most people joy and despair alternately and leading others to insanity. We know that religions commenced in fear and in their later stages have been the result of a seeking for happiness and consolation. To us the idea of immortality is but a development of the inherent conceit we notice in the apes. We do not allow ourselves the pleasing fantasy that because brain power multiplies itself and evolves quickly we are to become as gods in the future. If we do not hope much neither do we despair. Still, there is a capacity for joy within us which sometimes seems to be cramped by the level and unexciting mediocrity of existence. We do not readily forget the beautiful hallucinations of our youth; and for most of us there will, I imagine, as long as the pulses beat, be an occasional and too frequent yearning for a joy able to lift us out of our humdrum selves."
Margaret felt a sort of sorrow for Geoffrey. Although he spoke lightly, something in his last words struck a minor chord in her heart. "Your words seem too sad," she said after a pause.
"I do not remember speaking sadly," said he.
"No; but to believe all this seems sad when we consider the joyful prospects of others. You seem to put my vague ideas into coherent shape. The things you have said seem to be correct, and yet" (here she looked up brightly) "somehow they don't seem to exactly apply to me. I never had strong hopes nor visions about immortality. They never seemed necessary for my happiness. Small things please me. I am nearly always fairly happy. Small things seem worth seeking and small pleasures worth cultivating."
"Because you have not lived your life. Do you imagine that you will always be content with small pleasures?" asked Geoffrey quickly as he watched her thoughtful face.
Margaret suddenly felt constraint. After the many and long interviews she had had with Geoffrey she had always come away feeling as if she had learned something. What it was that she had learned might have been hard for her to say. His conversation seemed to her to have a certain width and scope about it, and to her he seemed to grasp generalities and present them in his own condensed form; but she had been unconsciously learning more than was contained in his conversation. His words generally appealed in some way to her intellect; but tones of voice go for a good deal. Perhaps in making love the chief use of words is first to attract the attention of the other person. Perhaps they do not amount to much and could be dispensed with entirely, for we see that a dozen suitors may unsuccessfully plead their cause with a young woman in similar words until some one appears with tones of voice to which she vibrates. Perhaps it matters little what he says if he only continues to speak—to make her vibrate. Certainly Cupid studied music before he ever studied etymology. Hampstead had never said a word to her about love, but the resonant tones, his concentration, and the magnetism of his presence, were doing their work without any usual formulas.
The necessity of answering his question now brought the idea to her with a rush that Geoffrey had taught her perhaps too much—that he had taught her things different from what she thought she was learning—that the simplicity of her life would never be quite the same again. She became conscious of a movement in her pulses before unknown to her that made her heart beat like a prisoned bird against its cage, that made her whole being seem to strain forward toward an unknown joy which left all the world behind it. In the whirl of feeling came the impulse to conceal her face lest he should detect her thoughts, and she bent her head to arrange her lace shawl, as if preparatory to going away. She looked off over the water, so that she could answer more freely. Her answer came haltingly.
"Something tells me," she said, "that the small pleasures I have known will not always be enough for me." Then faster: "But, of course, all young people feel like this now and then. I think our conversation has excited me a little."