“No,” Egidia murmured under her breath, too much moved to resent the question.
“It is just those very silent men whom every one adores,” the other went on. “But he always preferred his art to me. I knew it at the time, only I was so blinded. Then when he realized that he was compromising me, he did the honourable thing, and proposed. Of course I don’t suppose he thought me quite impossible, he felt it would be just bearable to be married to me, if he had to be married, but he had never meant to be married, as you say. But you must see, that if I come to think that, how very much more humiliating it makes it for me—how painful to have to think that one was only proposed to out of pity and a sense of duty!”
She turned her face away, sobbing.
Egidia put her arm round her. She could unfeignedly sympathise with the very real sorrows of wounded vanity. She felt she had spoken plainly—with full conviction and honest intent, it was true, but still plainly and perhaps brutally. She was conscious that her care had been all along for the man, and not the woman.
“My dear, my dear,” she said, drawing Mrs. Elles close to her, “there is another thing I see—that saves it a little—a good deal, I think!”
“What?” asked Phœbe Elles.
“You don’t really love him either!”
“What, not love him?”
“No, you think you do, you would die for him, of course, but you don’t love him. You happen to have chosen him for an emotional centre, every woman, if she is a woman, has to find an emotional centre, but she does not always choose well. Edmund, like all geniuses, is self-centred without being selfish; you understand me; he is to be regarded as exempt from the ordinary responsibilities of humanity, morally and otherwise. He is quite willing to be worshipped—what man is not? but he has no time to worship, or be aux petits soins with anybody. He could not, if he liked, make any woman happy, certainly not a passionate woman. She could never exist long in the rarefied spiritual atmosphere into which dear Edmund would want to lift her, where he lives—and flourishes. He can feel, of course, the big things, but he has, as it were, no small change of emotion at any one’s service. And he doesn’t, on his side, ask for anything. He is sufficient unto himself. Did you not observe, when you were with him, how he accepted your devotion, but made no demands on it!”
“He let me rub his colours for him!” Mrs. Elles said, laughing.