My fair ideal had also reached a momentous conclusion, for she said, with the emphasis of a final decision:
"I won't cut that dress after Emily Warren's pattern. I'll cut it to suit myself."
I had been falling from a seventh heaven of hope for some time, but at this moment I struck reality with a thump that almost made me sick and giddy. The expression of my face reminded her of the irrelevancy of her remark, and she blushed slightly, but laughed it off, saying:
"Pardon me, that I followed my own thoughts for a moment rather than yours. These matters, no doubt, seem mere trifles to you gentlemen, but they are weighty questions to us girls who have to make a little go a great way. Won't you, please, repeat what you said about that lady who wrote a book for the sake of its binding? I think it's a pretty idea."
I was so incensed that I answered as I should not have done. "She was remarkably successful. Every one looked at the binding, but were soon satisfied to look no farther."
I was both glad and vexed that she did not catch my meaning, for she said, with a smile:
"It would make a pretty ornament."
"It would not be to my taste," I replied briefly. "The beautiful binding would hold out the promise of a good book, which, not being fulfilled, would be tantalizing."
"Do you know the lady well?"
"Yes, I fear I do."
"How strangely you look at me!"
"Excuse me," I said, starting. "I fear I followed your example and was thinking of something else."
But I let what I was thinking about slip out.
"It was indeed a revelation. My thoughts will not interest you, I fear. The experience of a man who saw a mirage in the desert came into my mind."
"I don't see what put that into your head."
"Nor do I, now. The world appears to me entirely matter-of-fact."
"I'm glad to hear you say that. Mother is always talking to me about spiritual meanings and all that. Now I agree with you. Things are just what they are. Some we like, and some we don't like. What more is there to say about them? I think people are very foolish if they bother themselves over things or people they don't like. I hope mother will take you to board, for I would like to have some one in the house who looks at things as I do."
"Thanks. Woman's intuition is indeed unerring."
"I declare, there comes Silas Jones with his new top-buggy. You won't mind his making one of our party, will you?"
"I think I will go to my room and rest awhile, and thus I shall not be that chief of this world's evils—the odious third party." And I rose decisively.
"I'd rather you wouldn't go," she said. "I don't care specially for him, and he does not talk half so nicely as you do. You needn't go on his account. Indeed, I like to have half a dozen gentlemen around me."
"You are delightfully frank."
"Yes, I usually say what I think."
"And do as you please," I added.
"Certainly. Why shouldn't I when I can? Don't you?"
"But I came from the wicked city." "So does Emily Warren."
"Is she wicked?"
"I don't know; she keeps it to herself if she is; and, by the way, she is very quiet, I can never get her to talk much about herself. She appears so good that mother is beginning to quote her as an example, and that, you know, always makes one detest a person. I think there is some mystery about her. I'm sorry you will go, for I've lots of questions I'd like to ask you now we are acquainted."
"Pardon me; I'm not strong, and must have a rest. Silas Jones will answer just as well."
"Not quite," she said softly, with a smile designed to be bewitching.
As I passed up the hall I heard her say, "Silas Jones, I'm pleased to see thee."
I threw myself on the lounge in my room in angry disgust.
"O Nature!" I exclaimed, "what excuse have you for such perverseness? By every law of probability—by the ordinary sequence of cause and effect—this girl should have been what I fancied her to be. This, then, forsooth, is the day of my fate! It would be the day of doom did some malicious power chain me to this brainless, soulless, heartless creature. What possessed Nature to make such a blunder, to begin so fairly and yet reach such a lame and impotent conclusion? To the eye the girl is the fair and proper outcome of this home and beautiful country life. In reality she is a flat contradiction to it all, reversing in her own character the native traits and acquired graces of her father and mother.
"As if controlled and carried forward by a hidden and malign power, she goes steadily against her surrounding influences that, like the winds of heaven, might have wafted her toward all that is good and true. Is not sweet, quaint Mrs. Yocomb her mother? Is not the genial, hearty old gentleman her father? Has she not developed among scenes that should ennoble her nature, and enrich her mind with ideality? There is Oriental simplicity and largeness in her parents' faith. Abraham sitting at the door of his tent, could scarcely have done better. Hers is the simplicity of silliness, which reveals what a woman of sense, though no better than herself, would not speak of. It is exasperating to think that her eyes and fingers are endowed with a sense of harmony and beauty, so that she can cut a gown and adorn her lovely person to perfection, and yet be so idiotic as to make a spectacle of herself in her real womanhood. As far as I can make out, Nature is more to blame than the girl. There is not a bat blinking in the sunlight more blind than she to every natural beauty of this June day; and yet her eyes are microscopic, and she sees a host of little things not worth seeing. A true womanly moral nature seems never to have been infused into her being. She detests children, her little sister shrinks from her; she speaks and surmises evil of the absent; to strut down Fifth Avenue in finery, to which she has given her whole soul, is her ideal of happiness—there, stop! She is the daughter of my kind host and hostess. The mystery of this world's evil is sadly exemplified in her defective character, from which sweet, true womanliness was left out. I should pity her, and treat her as if she were deformed. Poor Mrs. Yocomb! Even mother-love cannot blind her to the truth that her fair daughter is a misshapen creature." After a little, I added wearily, "I wish I had never seen her; I am the worse for this day's mirage," and I closed my eyes in dull apathy.
CHAPTER V
MUTUAL DISCOVERIES
I must have slept for an hour or more, for when I awoke I saw through the window-lattice that the sun was declining in the west. Sleep had again proved better than all philosophy or medicine, for it had refreshed me and given something of the morning's elasticity.
I naturally indulged in a brief retrospect, conscious that while nothing had happened, since the croaking printer's remark, that I would care to print in the paper, experiences had occurred that touched me closer than would the news that all the Malays of Asia were running amuck. I felt as if thrown back on to my old life and work in precisely their old form. My expedition into the country and romance had been disappointing. It is true I had found rest and sleep, and for these I was grateful, and with these stanch allies I can go on with my work, which I now believe is the best thing the world has for me. I shall go back to it to-morrow, well content, after this day's experience, to make it my mistress. The bare possibility of being yoked to such a woman as in fancy I have wooed and won to-day makes me shiver with inexpressible dread. Her obtuseness, combined with her microscopic