Thus the ice that had filled the cabin was broken, in a measure, at last, and this at once eased the gloom and coldness of the wretched lives imprisoned therein.
From that beginning the convalescent drifted easily and gracefully into an account of her world of wealth and pleasure and fashion. She realized that she must first open her own life before she could expect her host to give her a view of his and of the nearer and stranger things that impinged upon her. Her voice was smooth and musical. She dwelt particularly upon the lighter and fashionable side of her life, because she believed that the tact and refinement of the man who listened so well, yet so silently, were born of such a life, and that he had deliberately withdrawn himself from it.
Matters went more smoothly after that day. But the young woman was finally forced to accept her defeat,—she had opened her own simple, vacant life, but had gained not a glimpse into his. And she realized, further, that all the advances toward a friendlier understanding had been made by her, and none by him; that his manner toward her, with all its tireless watchfulness, its endless solicitude, its total extinction of every selfish thought, its impenetrable reserve, had not changed one jot or tittle. Then a bitter resentment filled her, and she hated him and determined to torture him.
He had not been so guarded but that she had found a vulnerable spot in his mail. This was what she regarded as the silly, sentimental side of his nature. She had led him into this disclosure by a long series of adroit moves, the purpose of which he had not suspected. Assuming a profound appreciation of the softer and tenderer things of life, she had brought herself into the attitude of one who cherishes them, and thus led him into the trap. Their talk concerned love, and he opened his heart and displayed all its foolish weakness.
“Can there be anything more sacred,” he asked, warmly, “than the love of men and women? Is there anything to which trifling should be more repugnant? The man who loves one woman with all in him that makes him a man, has taken that into his soul which will be its refining and uplifting force to the end of all things with him; and, noble as that is, the love of a woman for one man who loves her surpasses it beyond all comprehension, and is the truest gleam of heavenly radiance in human lives.”
It was spared him to see the amused and contemptuous curl of lip that bespoke a world-worn heart; but he had let down his guard, and his punishment would come.
It was some days afterward that the blow fell. The convalescent was now sitting on a chair, where her ever-solicitous nurse had placed her. She was now ready to strike. She would hold up to him a mirror of himself,—a weak, sentimental, pusillanimous man. Fortunately, she could relate from an experience in her own life a tale whose ridiculous hero she judged had been just such a man as Dr. Malbone. She would be violating none of the rules of hospitality. Her host had permitted her to walk into a humiliating position, and her desire to punish him should not be denied gratification.
She had brought the talk round to the mistakes that men and women make in the bestowal of their affection, and remarked carelessly that men were proverbially stupid in estimating the loveliness of women. Almost without exception, she declared, they preferred girls for their beauty, their softness, their negative qualities, their genuine or pretended helplessness; and she added that a woman of strength and true worth would scorn a love so cheaply won and held in so light esteem by its bestowers.
“But some girls,” she added, “are even worse than men. You may generally expect stupidity from a man, but not always folly from a girl. A rather distressing case of a girl’s folly once came to my notice. There was a girl who had been my classmate in school. It was there that we formed for each other the girlish affection which all girls must have at that age. Yet the difference between us was great even then, and it increased after we had gone out into the world. She and I moved in the same circle. Her parents were wealthy, and she had every opportunity to see and learn life and get something of value from it. Instead of that, she grew more and more retired, and less fitted for the life to which she belonged. She was the most unpractical and romantic girl that ever lived. Her girl friends dropped her one by one. I was the last to remain, and I did all I could to get some worldly sense into her soft and foolish head. She would only smile, and put her arms round me, and declare that she knew she was foolish, but that she couldn’t help it.
“She was very fond of music and poetry, and at last I learned that she was taking lessons on the violin from some fiddling nobody who made his living by playing and teaching. I never happened to see him, or I might have done something to stop the mischief that was brewing. Her parents were blind to her folly, but that is a common weakness of parents.