"Never!" Charmian assented. The gleam of common-sense which had visited her for an instant, was lost in the lime-light of romance, which her fancy cast upon the situation. "And what are you going to do?" she asked, enraptured by its hopeless gloom.
"Nothing. What can I do?"
"No. You can do nothing." She started, as with a sudden inspiration. "Why, look here, Cornelia! Why wouldn't this do?"
She stopped so long that Cornelia asked, somewhat crossly, "Well?"
"I don't know whether I'd better tell you. But I know it would be the very thing. Do you want me to tell you?"
"Oh, it makes no difference," said Cornelia, hopelessly.
Charmian went on tentatively, "Why, it's this. I've often heard of such things: Me to pretend that I wrote this horrid Dickerson letter, and there isn't any such person; but I did it just for a joke, or wanted to break off the engagement because I couldn't bear to give you up. Don't you see? It's like lots of things on the stage, and I've read of them, I'd be perfectly willing to sacrifice myself in such a cause, and I should have to, for after I said I had done such a thing as that, he would never let you speak to me again, or look at me, even. But I should die happy——" She stopped, frozen to silence, by the scornful rejection in Cornelia's look. "Oh, no, no! It wouldn't do! I see it wouldn't! Don't speak! But there's nothing else left, that I know of." She added, by another inspiration, "Or, yes! Now—now—we can live for each other, Cornelia. You will outlive this. You will be terribly changed, of course; and perhaps your health may be affected; but I shall always be with you from this on. I have loved you more truly than he ever did, if he can throw you over for a little thing like that. If I were a man I should exult to ignore such a thing. Oh, if men could only be what girls would be if they were men! But now you must begin to forget him from this instant—to put him out of your mind—your life."
To further this end Charmian talked of Ludlow for a long time, and entered upon a close examination of his good and bad qualities; his probable motives for now behaving as he was doing, and the influence of the present tragedy upon his future as a painter. It would either destroy him or it would be the fire out of which he would rise a master; he would degenerate into a heartless worldling, which he might very well do, for he was fond of society, or he might become a gloomy recluse, and produce pictures which the multitude would never know were painted with tears and blood. "Of course, I don't mean literally; the idea is rather disgusting; but you know what I mean, Cornelia. He may commit suicide, like that French painter, Robert; but he doesn't seem one of that kind, exactly; he's much more likely to abandon art and become an art-critic. Yes, it may make an art-critic of him."
Cornelia sat in a heavy muse, hearing and not hearing what she said. Charmian bustled about, and made a fire of lightwood, and then kindled her spirit lamp, and made tea, which she brought to Cornelia. "We may as well take it," she said. "We shall not sleep to-night anyway. What a strange ending to our happy evening. It's perfectly Hawthornesque. Don't you think it's like the Marble Faun, somehow? I believe you will rise to a higher life through this trouble, Cornelia, just as Donatello did through his crime. I can arrange it with mamma to be with you; and if I can't I shall just simply abandon her, and we will take a little flat like two newspaper girls that I heard of, and live together. We will get one down-town, on the East Side."
Cornelia look the tea and drank it, but she could not speak. It would have been easier to bear if she had only had herself alone to blame, but mixed with her shame, and with her pity for him, was a sense of his want of wisdom in refusing to let her speak at once, when she wanted to tell him all about Dickerson. That was her instinct; she had been right, and he wrong; she might be to blame for everything since, but he was to blame then and for that. Now it was all wrong, and past undoing. She tried, in the reveries running along with what she was hearing of Charmian's talk, every way of undoing it that she could imagine: she wrote to Ludlow; she sent for him; she went to him; but it was all impossible. She did not wish to undo the wrong that she might have back her dream of happiness again; she had been willing to be less than true, and she could wish him to know that she hated herself for that.