“Why, since I deserve it?”
“The you that you sometimes take a pleasure in assuming to be may deserve it. The real you does n't. And it is the real you that I know—that has given me friendship and is going to marry my dearest friend. The other you is a phantom of a hollow world in which circumstances have placed you.”
“I think the phantom is happier than the reality,” said Norma, with a laugh. “'The dream is better than the drink.' The hollow world is the safer place, after all.”
“Where imagination doth not corrupt and enthusiasms do not break in and steal,” said Jimmie, with unusual bitterness. “I have seen very little of it—but you have told me things,” he continued lamely, “and your being in it and of it seems a profanation. When you wilfully identify yourself with its ideals, you hurt me; and when I am hurt, I cry out.”
“But why should you care so much about what I am and what I am not?” she asked in a tone half of genuine enquiry and half of expectancy, wholly kind and soft..
He dug the point of his stick into the turf and did not raise his eyes. He knew now what a fool's game of peril he was playing, and kept himself in check. Yet his voice trembled as he replied:
“Morland is very dear to me. You, his future wife, have grown dear to me also. I suppose I have lived rather a simple sort of life and take my emotions seriously.”
“I hope you thank God for it,” said Norma.
The swift rattle of a carriage turning into the drive broke the talk, which had grown too personal to be left voluntarily. Jimmie felt infinitely grateful to the visitors, like a man suddenly saved from a threatening precipice. Leaving Norma with a bow, he fled into the house and selecting a book from the library, went onto the terrace. He needed solitude. Something of which he was unaware was happening. Circumstances were not the same as when he had first arrived. Then he had looked on Norma with brave serenity. He was happy, loving her and receiving frank friendship from her condescending hands. Now it was growing to be a pain to watch her face, a dread to hear her voice. Sweet intercourse had become a danger. And a few days had brought about the change. Why? Of the riot in the woman's nature he knew nothing. In his blank ignorance, seeking the cause within himself, he asked, Why?
He crossed the tennis lawn, went through the little opening at the end of the hedge, and down to the seclusion of the croquet ground. Half-way along the sloping bank beneath the upper terrace some one had left a rug. He threw himself upon it, and tried like many another poor fool to reason down his hunger. But all the sensitive nerves with which the imaginative man, for his curse or his blessing, is endowed, were vibrating from head to foot. Her words sang in his ears: “Why should you care so much about what I am and what I am not?” The real answer burst passionately from his heart.