For some time we drifted along, talking about nothing of moment, skirting the shore of the charmed unknown, deep within which lay the mystery of that which we both possibly meant, however indefinitely, to explore. Then we struck a little further in; and began to exchange experiences—first our early impressions of John Marvel and Wolffert. It was then that she told me of her coming to know John Marvel in the country that night during the epidemic. She did not tell of her part in the relief of the sick; but it was unnecessary. John Marvel had already told me that. It was John himself, with his wonderful unselfishness and gift of self-abnegation, of whom she spoke, and Wolffert with his ideal ever kept in sight.
"What turned you to philanthropy?" I asked with a shade of irony in my voice more marked than I had intended. If she was conscious of it she took no notice of it beyond saying,
"If you mean the poor, pitiful little bit of work I do trying to help Mr. Marvel and Mr. Wolffert among the poor—John Marvel did, and Mr. Wolffert made the duty clear. They are the complement of each other, Jew and Gentile, and if all men were like them there would be no divisions."
I expressed my wonder that she should have kept on, and not merely contented herself with giving money or helping for that one occasion. Sudden converts generally relapse.
"Oh! it was not any conversion. It gave life a new interest for me. I was bored to death by the life I had been leading since I came out. It was one continuous round of lunches, dinners, parties, dances, soirées, till I felt as if I were a wooden steed in a merry-go-round, wound up and wearing out. You see I had, in a way, always been 'out.' I used to go about with my father, and sit at the table and hear him and his friends—men friends—for I did not come to the table when ladies were there, till I was fifteen—talk about all sorts of things, and though I often did not understand them, I used to ask him and he would explain them, and then I read up and worked to try to amuse him, so that when I really came out, I found the set in which I was thrown rather young. It was as if I had fallen through an opened door into a nursery. I was very priggish, I have no doubt, but I was bored. Jim Canter and Milly McSheen were amusing enough for a while, but really they were rather young. I was fond of driving and dancing, but I did not want to talk about it all the time, and then as I got older——"
"How old?" I demanded, amused at her idea of age.
"Why, eighteen. How old do you think I should have been?"
"Oh! I don't know; you spoke as if you were as old as Anna in the temple. Pray go on."
"Well, that's all. I just could not stand it. Aunt Sophie was bent on my marrying—somebody whom I could not bear—and oh! it was an awful bore. I looked around and saw the society women I was supposed to copy, and I'd rather have been dead than like that—eating, clothes, and bridge—that made up the round, with men as the final end and reward. I think I had hardly taken it in, till my eyes were opened once by a man's answer to a question as to who had been in the boxes at a great concert which he had attended and enjoyed: 'Oh! I don't know—the usual sort—women who go to be seen with other women's husbands. The musical people were in the gallery listening.' Next time I went my eyes had been opened and I listened and enjoyed the music. So, when I discovered there were real men in the world doing things, and really something that women could do, too, I found that life had a new interest, that is all."
"You know," she said, after a pause in which she was reflecting and I was watching the play of expression in her face and dwelling in delicious reverie on the contour of her soft cheek, "You know, if I ever amount to anything in this world, it will be due to that man." This might have meant either.