"But I am so confoundedly thirsty!"
"Take the soda without the brandy, then. Really, I would advise you not to touch that spirit to-night."
"Oh, I don't much care! let it be the soda;" and I filled another tumbler with the latter and drank it. "But what is your own opinion about this business with Lucia," I asked, when Dick had stretched himself on the sofa and started his cigar. "What puzzles me so is the great change in her—a change apparently in the whole tenour of her feelings. You can't think how wide the difference is between her now and a year ago. I told you that she came over to Paris to see me, didn't I?"
Dick nodded.
"That was only twelve months back, and she was simply—well, she was evidently very much in love then. You know what I mean, and she made no effort to conceal it. She urged our marriage; and then, when we decided it was impossible, she would have liked me to go any reasonable lengths in demonstration of my love for her, and so on. I made a mistake there, perhaps, but I thought it unwise. We hardly knew where we were as it was. She seemed utterly weak, and I felt she might say things in those moments she would be fearfully cut up to remember afterwards. It seemed dishonourable in my shackled, circumscribed position to lead her any farther on. That was my idea—perhaps it was mistaken—I don't know. Anyway we shook hands merely. Then, at that time, she invited a kiss in every way short of demanding it. Now, to-night I kissed her hand, not a very extraordinary nor embarrassing action, and yet I thought she was going to faint as a result. It moved some very strong sensation, repulsion or disgust, or something, and I want to know what."
"You see, Vic," Dick said, after a minute or two of silence, laying down the cigar and driving his elbow into the sofa cushion, and leaning his head on his hand. He looked past me absently towards the fender, and spoke as a person does whose opinion has long since been formed. "We can't hold over anything in this life, opportunities, our own powers, health, youth, they are all things you can't store for the future. All we can do is to use them when they are put into our hands. Still less can we reserve and warehouse our own feelings and emotions, and least of all, those of others. You might compare passion to a gas. If you allow gas its expansion it diffuses itself and is lost. If you subject it to confinement with close pressure, it becomes a liquid and loses its original form. It is the same with passion. It is impossible to maintain it as such. Either it evaporates in gratification or it undergoes some metamorphosis in suppression."
I said nothing. There was a sort of coldness and weight in his words and tone that increased my own apprehensions.
"You can keep nothing up to the pitch of a crisis. We all know that. Even a kettle of water, when it is once boiling, you cannot keep it so. It must boil over into the flames or simmer down or dry up. And if you reject a woman at the crisis of her passion, there is an enormous probability that, in waiting, her virtue or her inclination or her health will break down. Either her feelings may transport her into some folly or they may cool. If her will is too strong to allow the folly, and her nature too ardent to permit the cooling, then her constitution must give way. This last is what, judging from all I see, I should think—since you ask my opinion, old fellow, you know—has happened in Lucia's case."
I looked at him with a faint feeling of surprise. His manner, voice, and words conveyed such an idea of certainty and perfect decision in his own mind.
"Yes," I answered; "I suppose that is it. Well, that is what she told me, virtually, herself."