“Well, so am I.”
“It’s the happiness of a bravado. Wait till it wears off. But no, Quincy—don’t wait! You’ll be used to life here, by then. Used to it, that is, enough not to be able to get used to any other. Used to nothing—in other words.”
“You are a very wise girl, Clarice.”
“I was wiser than you, even that summer. That was why I was willing to like you—willing to like you, Quincy, as much as you cared to ask for;—but not willing to see you in New York! In fact, you were exceedingly foolish.”
The young man leaned back in his chair (a posture denoting ease) and looked at her. Four years had at once subdued and strengthened her. Her hair was a duller gold and her eyes looked grey in the shaded light, whereas the gleam of the summer sun had then brought out the spring in them—the green. Her body was no less slender, no taller. But her mastership had calmed it, given it a composure in unison with the firm cut of her dainty mouth and the regular line of her small nose. Quincy had not liked her hands, since they had been both short and soft. Now they seemed lighter, freer, longer. They seemed to have the power now to poise and balance. They had been the paws of a rather destructive savage; they and her eyes had altered most. Quincy was awed, not by herself but by the feeling of aloofness that stood between them, making their past of comradeship unreal. Yet the dash and spice of this made her all the more desirable, despite the accent of mentorship and of superiority that now seemed natural to her.
And then, from this easeful figure so composed before him, his mind glanced back—she was still too hard for piercing—and fell upon himself. Again, it seemed to Quincy that he had made a mistake. Again, it became easier to turn against himself, plough there, rend there, than give calm heed to the force that did this and make his venture elsewhere.
Clarice seemed so intact, so right! Quincy felt disgust at his own lack of measure before this girl. She was younger than himself in years; he had branded her, and, he was sure, once turned her down as a hard flirt. Yet, despite her lack of mind and of experience, how ably she had mastered her environment compared to him; how well turned all the swirling things about her to her advantage, to her own channels, in contrast to his floundering and illusions and utterly unformed bravado! For what could he think of his new armor and his new creeds when a few talks with Clarice disintegrated them, sent them pell-mell, haphazard like the little evil live things seen through a microscope in a glass of dirty water?
He thought of Adelaide and his behavior there came to him more nearly in its proper light. He had never faced her, either. But since she was tender and soft and inefficient, he had been able to fend her off. That was not prowess. He felt sorry for her ineptitude; angry at her for not being able better to present her case since it was worthy and since he had need of it. Adelaide, self-asserting, might have saved him from these pitiful, merciless results of a few encounters outside the Rut. He blamed her for it. And once again the old vision of Marsden came to him—as if it had been new—of Marsden the unclean thing, and of the City that was his temple.
But all of these things were uncomfortable and fleeting as yet. For both reasons they must not seem important; they must not seem to last.
Here, before him was Clarice, looking at him, delving within him doubtless, for the causes of his silence.