WHAT HE THOUGHT OF THINGS.
How grateful to the sensitive heart of the young man would have been
the knowledge that he was an object of thoughtful interest to Julia's
mother, who, next to his own, had his reverence and regard! He knew he
was generally disliked; his intuitions assured him of this, and in his
young arrogance he had not cared. Indeed, he had come to feel a morbid
pleasure in avoiding and being avoided; but now, as he sat in the
little silent room in the late night, he felt his isolation. He
had been appalled at a discovery--or rather a revelation--made that
afternoon. He knew that he loved Julia, and that this love would be
the one passion of manhood, as it had been of his boyhood. He had
given himself up to it as to a delicious onflowing stream, drifting
him through enchanted lands, and had not thought or cared whither it
might bear, or on what desolate shore it might finally strand him.
Now he felt its full strength and power, and he knew, too, that it was
a force to be controlled, when perhaps that had become impossible. He
had never asked himself if a return of his passion were even possible,
until now, when his whole fervid nature had gone out in a great hungry
longing for her love and sympathy. She had never stood so lovely and
so inaccessible as he had seen her that day. How deeply through and
through came the first greeting of her eyes! It was an electric flash
never received before, and which as suddenly disappeared. How cool and
indifferent was her manner and look as he approached, and stood near
her! No inquiry, save that mocking one! Not a word; not a thought of
where he had been, or why he had returned, or what he would do; the
shortest answer as to his inquiry about her mother; no intimation that
he might even call at the house. Thus he went over with it all--over
and over again. What did he care? But he did, and could not deceive
himself. He did care, and must not; and then he went back over all
their intercourse since her return home, two or three months before he
left, and it was all alike on her part--a cool, indifferent avoidance
of him.
Oh, she was so glorious--so beautiful! The whole world lay in the
span of her slender waist--a world not for him. Was it something to
be adventured for, fought for, found anywhere? something that he could
climb up to and take? something to plunge down to in fathomless ocean
and carry back? No, it was her woman's heart. Like her father, she
disliked him; and if, like her father, she would openly let him see
and hear it--but doesn't she? What had he to offer her? How could he
overcome her father's dislike? He felt in his soul what would come to
him finally, but then, in the lapsing time? And she avoided him now!
He returned to his algebraic problem, with a desperate plunge at its
solution. The unknown quantity remained unknown; and, a moment later,
he was gratified to see how he had finally caught and expressed, with
his pencil, a look of Julia, that had always eluded him before. But
was he to be overcome by a girl? Was life and its ambitions to be
crushed out and brought to nought by one small hand? He would see. It
would be inexpressible luxury to tell her once--but just once--all his
passion and worship, and then, of course, remain silent forever, and
go out of her presence. He wished her to know it all, so that, as she
would hear and know of him in the coming years, she would know that he
was worthy, not of her love, but worthy to love her, whatever that may
mean, or whatever of comfort it might bring to either. What precious
logic the heart of a young man in his twenty-second year is capable
of!