“But perhaps he can say the same of you,” hazarded Egidia.
“No, Mortimer has never understood me, never! I am a sealed book to him,” said the wife, airily, although Miss Giles’ suggestion had indeed given her a little shock.
“Don’t flatter yourself, my dear, that you are a sealed book to anyone. It is the common delusion.” (Another shock to Mrs. Elles!) “One is always so much less interesting, so much less complicated, so much less of a sphinx than one thinks.”
“But I have always thought of mine as a very complicated nature,” Mrs. Elles rejoined, pouting; “I am sure I can’t tell you how many thoughts pass through my mind in a day, and I seem to have a perfectly new mood every minute.”
“So we all have, but we don’t take cognizance of them or act on them all. I should say that you are one of those people who begin with a radical mistake—that of expecting too much of life. You think you have a right to be happy. Good Heavens! You seek for midi à quatorze heures, you love change for its own sake; you positively enjoy hot water. You would rather have a painful emotion than none at all, you would like to cry, with Sophie Arnould, ‘Oh, le bon temps, j’etais si malheureuse!’ You have not mastered the great fact, that emotions are not to the emotional; to them is generally awarded the dreary crux of the commonplace, and that I think is hardest to bear of all, that one’s cross should come in the way of material comfort and spiritual uneventfulness, and when it comes to the point, instead of action to be taken there is only temper—to be kept!”
“I always scorn to nag,” said Mrs. Elles, “it seems so ungraceful.”
“I am sure, my dear, that whatever you may feel, you always manage to look decorative!” said the other, smiling. “Still, you expect too much and give too little to be what I call easy to live with!”
“That is what I say,” cried Mrs. Elles, triumphantly. “I call that being complicated.”
“Do you?” said the authoress, drily. “I should be tempted to call it want of social tact—an almost culpable ignorance of the science of give and take, a—you must really forgive me for my brutal frankness”—she broke off suddenly and laughed confusedly—“but, you know, you asked me to speak freely.”
“I love it,” declared Phœbe Elles, adjusting a cushion behind her head. “I think I like to talk about myself, even if it is disagreeable,” she added, with unusual frankness.