“You dislike him,” said Ella. “I feel that you do.”
The feline that is in the nature of all women—just as its stronger, tigerish development is in the nature of all men—tingled to her finger ends. She felt the velvet sheaths stiffen back. The sight of him angered her. She itched to provoke him to battle, to fall on him tooth and claw if he took up her challenge. An unreasoning instinct clamoured also for violent defence of Roderick. It was a psychological moment full of many feminine complexities which she half understood; and that made her the more angry.
Sylvester, looking only on the surface, smiled somewhat contemptuously at her desire to scratch. Certainly he had undertaken a campaign against her; but he felt that so undignified a skirmish was not the wisest preliminary to hostilities. He had come here, besides, to reconnoitre.
“Why should I dislike Roderick?” he asked.
“Because you never try to understand anybody. Because Roderick has not locked himself up in your iron cage of convention; because he hasn't set himself up on a pillar of impeccability as you have done. You sit within your own prim parlour of moderation and think the man who goes to generous extremes is a lost soul. You need not have congratulated me. I should not have resented it. I should have understood and have given you credit for honesty.”
But Sylvester was not to be drawn into strife. He replied equably that he would withdraw his congratulations, if they offended her. Meanwhile they might talk of something pleasanter. She suggested Shakespeare and the musical glasses, with a fine air of disdain.
“Or the Walden Art Colony?” said Sylvester.
“What have you to say against the Colony?” she flashed.
“Nothing at all. Do you believe in it?”
“With all my heart. It is a great movement. It is an idea to live for. It is the first thing I have had to believe in since—since I threw off the girl and became a woman.”