“After she had left the room I found that this development was new to the family. They had not noticed it before, and then it struck me as odd. I suspected at once that there was some connections between this and her disappointed love life. The devastating effect of lack of success in love in youth had been too much for her. So this averted glance appeared to me to have something to do with that. Fearing to disturb or frighten her, and so alienate her, I chose to say nothing but instead came again and again in order to familiarize her with my presence, to cause her once more to take it as a matter of course. And to enlist her interest and sympathy, I pretended that there was a matter of taxes and some involved property that her father was helping me to solve.
“And in order to insure her presence I came as a rule just before dinner, staying some little time and talking with her. To guarantee being alone with her I had her father and his sister remain out for a few minutes after I arrived, so as to permit me to seem to wait. And on these occasions I invented all sorts of excuses for coming into conversation with her. On all of these visits I noticed that she still kept her face from me. Having discussed various things with her, I finally observed: ‘I notice, Marguerite, that whenever I come here now you never look at me. Don’t you like me? You used to look at me, and now you keep your face turned away. Why is that?’
“‘Oh, of course I like you, doctor, of course,’ she replied, ‘only,’ she paused, ‘well, I’ll tell you how it is: I don’t want to have the same effect on you that I do on other men.’”
“She paused and I stared, much interested. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand, Marguerite,’ I said.
“‘Well, you see, it’s this way,’ she went on, ‘it’s my beauty. All you men are alike you see: you can’t stand it. You would be just the same as the rest. You would be wanting to flirt with me, too, and it wouldn’t be your fault, but mine. You can’t help it. I know that now. But I don’t want you to be following me like the rest of them, and you would be if I looked at you as I do at the others.’ She had on at the time a large hat, which evidently she had been trying on before I came, and now she pulled it most coquettishly low over her face and then sidled, laughingly, out of the room.
“When I saw and heard this,” he went on, “I was deeply moved instead of being amused as some might imagine, for I recognized that this was an instance of one of those kindly compensations in nature about which I have been talking, some deep inherent wish on the part of some overruling Providence perhaps to make life more reasonably endurable for all of us. Here was this girl, sensitive and seeking, who had been denied everything—or, rather, the one thing she most craved in life; love. For years she had been compelled to sit by and see others have all the attention and pleasures, while she had nothing—no pleasures, no lovers. And because she had been denied them their import had been exaggerated by her; their color and splendor intensified. She had been crucified, after a fashion, until beauty and attention were all that her mind cried for. And then, behold the mercy of the forces about which we are talking! They diverted her mind in order to save her from herself. They appeared at last to preserve her from complete immolation, or so I see it. Life does not wish to crucify people, of that I am sure. It lives on itself—as we see,—is “red of beak and claw” as the phrase has it—and yet, in the deep, who knows there may be some satisfactory explanation for that too—who can tell? At any rate, as I see it basically, fundamentally, it is well-intentioned. Useless, pointless torture had no real place in it; or at least so I think.” He paused and stared, as though he had clinched his argument.
“Just the same, as you say,” I insisted, “it does live on itself, the slaughter houses, the stockyards, the butcher shops, the germs that live and fatten as people die. If you can get much comfort out of these you are welcome.”
He paid no attention to me. Instead, he went on: “This is only a theory of mine, but we know, for instance, that there is no such thing as absolute evil, any more than there is absolute good. There is only relative evil and relative good. What is good for or to me may be evil to you, and vice versa, like a man who may be evil to you and good to me.
“In the case of this girl I cannot believe that so vast a thing as life, involving as it does, all the enormous forces and complexities, would single out one little mite such as she deliberately and specially for torture. On the contrary, I have faith to believe that the thing is too wise and grand for that. But, according to my theory, the machinery for creating things may not always run true. A spinner of plans or fabrics wishes them to come forth perfect of course, arranges a design and gathers all the colors and threads for a flawless result. The machine may be well oiled. The engine perfectly geared. Every precaution taken, and yet in the spinning here and there a thread will snap, the strands become entangled, bits, sometimes whole segments spoiled by one accident and another, but not intentionally. On the other hand, there are these flaws, which come from where I know not, of course, but are accidental, I am sure, not intended by the spinner. At least I think so. They cause great pain. They cause the worst disasters. Yet our great mother, Nature, the greatest spinner of all, does what she can to right things—or so I wish to believe. Like the spinner himself, she stops the machine, unites the broken strands, uses all her ability to make things run smoothly once more. It is my wish to believe that in this case, where a homely girl could not be made into a beautiful one and youth could not be substituted for maturity, still nature brought about what I look upon as a beneficent illusion, a providential hallucination. Via insanity, Marguerite attained to all the lovely things she had ever longed for. In her unreason she had her beautiful face, her adoring cavaliers—they turned and followed her in the streets. She was beautiful to all, to herself, and must hide her loveliness in order to avert pain and disaster to others. How would you explain that? As reasoned and malicious cruelty on the part of nature. Or as a kindly intervention, a change of heart, a wish on the part of nature or something to make amends to her for all that she suffered, not to treat her or any of us too brutally or too unfairly? Or just accident? How?”
He paused once more and gazed at me, as much as to say: “Explain that, if you can.” I, in turn, stared, lost for the time being in thoughts of this girl, for I was greatly impressed. This picture of her, trying, in her deranged imaginings as to her beauty, to protect others from herself, turning her face away from those who might suffer because of her indifference, because she in her day had suffered from the indifference of others, finding in hallucination, in her jumbled fancies, the fulfilment of all her hopes, her dreams, was too sad. I was too sad. I could not judge, and did not. Truly, truly, I thought, I wish I might believe.