“Then I’ll keep ever so quiet till she’s done.”
Canterton had looked into the eyes of the child, and had seen the woman’s eyes, Eve’s eyes, in the child’s. For Eve’s eyes had been like the eyes of Lynette, till he, the man, had awakened a more primitive knowledge in them. He remembered how it had been said that the child is a finer, purer creation than either the man or the woman, and that the sex spirit is a sullying influence, blurring the more delicate colours; and Eve had had much of the child in her till he, in all innocence, had taught her to suffer.
A great pity overtook him as he looked down at Lynette, and wondered how he would feel if some blind idealist were ever to make her suffer. His pity showed him what love had failed to discover. He understood of a sudden how blind, how obstinate, and over-confident he must have seemed to Eve. He had killed all the child in her, and aroused the woman, and then refused to see that she had changed.
“I have been torturing her.”
His compassion was touched with shame.
“You are making it so impossible.”
That cry of hers had a new pathos. It was she who had suffered, because she had seen things clearly, while he had been too masterful, too sure of himself, too oblivious of her youth. One could not put the language of Summer into the mouth of Spring. It was but part of the miracle of growth that he had been studying all these years. Certain and inevitable changes had to occur when the sun climbed higher and the sap rose.
Canterton paused while they were in the thick of the larch wood.
“Lynette, old lady!”
“Yes, daddy?”