AN EPOCH-MAKING DEPARTURE.
A woman never moralizes until she has committed an immoral act. From the
moment she voluntarily accepts it until the moment she casts it aside,
she may do distasteful duty to the letter, but she does it mechanically.
The laws and canons are laid down, and she follows them without
analysis, however rebelliously. She may long for the forbidden as
consistently as she accepts her yoke, whether the yoke be of untempted
girlhood or hated matrimony; but the longing serves to deepen her
antipathy to bonds; she sees no beauty in average conditions. After she
has plucked the apple and eaten it raw, skin, core and all, and is
suffering from the indigestion thereof, she is enabled to analytically
compare it with such fruits as do not induce dyspepsia.
Although Hermia was far from acknowledging that she loved Quintard, she
allowed him occasionally to reign in her imagination, and had more than
one involuntary, abstract, but tender interview with him. This, she
assured herself, was purely speculative, and in the way of objective
amusement, like the theater or the opera. When she found that she
thought of him always as her husband she made no protest; he was too
good for anything less. Nor, she decided, had she met him earlier and
been able to love him, would she have been content with any more
imperfect union.
Cryder still came with more or less regularity. There were brief,
frantic moments, as when she had sought death in the torrent; but on the
whole she was too indifferent to break with him. Her life was already
ruined; what mattered her actions? Moreover, habit is a tremendous
force, and he had a certain hold over her, a certain fascination, with
which the physical had nothing to do.
After she had known Quintard about two months she found herself free.
Cryder, in truth, was quite as tired as herself. Ennui was in his
tideless veins, and, moreover, the time had come to add another flower
to his herbarium. But he did not wish to break with Hermia until his
time came to leave the city. If she had loved him, it might have been
worth while to hurt her; but, as even his egoism could not persuade him
that she gave him more than temperate affection, he would not risk the
humiliation of being laughed at.
One evening he told her that he must go South the following week and
remain several months. His dialect was growing rusty, and the public
would expect another novel from him in the coming spring. He hated to
say good-bye to her, but his muse claimed his first and highest duty.
Hermia felt as one who comes out of a room full of smoke—she wanted to
draw a long breath and throw back her head. She replied very politely,
however—they were always very polite—that she should miss him and look
forward to his return. Neither would avow that this was the end of the
matter, but each was devoutly thankful that the other was not a fool.
Cryder looked melancholy and handsome when he came to say good-bye. He
had on extremely becoming traveling clothes, and his skin and eyes had
their accustomed clearness. He bade Hermia a tender farewell, and his
eyes looked resigned and sad. Then an abstracted gaze passed into them,
as if his spirit had floated upward to a plane far removed from common
affection.
Hermia had much ado to keep her mouth from curling. She remembered what
Quintard had once said of him: that he always wanted to throw him on a
table to see if he would ring. Bah! what a _poseur_ he was! Then she
mentally shrugged her shoulders. His egoism had its value; he had never
noticed the friendship which existed between her and Quintard. Had he
been a jealous man he would have been insufferable.
After he had gone he seemed to glide out of her life—out of the past as
of the present. She found herself barely able to recall him, his
features, his characteristics. For a long time she never thought of him
unless some one mentioned his name, and then she wondered if he had not
been the hero of a written sketch rather than of an actual episode.
Whether it was owing to Cryder’s removal or to Quintard’s influence, she
could not tell, but she found herself becoming less blasé. Her spirits
were lighter, people interested her more, life seemed less prosaic. She
asked Quintard once what it meant, and he told her, with his usual
frankness, that it was the spring. This offended her, and she did not
speak for ten minutes.
On another occasion he roused her to wrath. He told her one day that on
the night he met her he had been impressed with a sense of unreality
about her; and, acting on a sudden impulse, she told him the history of
her starved and beautiless girlhood. When she finished she expected many
comments, but Quintard merely put another log of wood on the fire and
remarked:
“That is all very interesting, but I am warned that the dinner-hour
approaches. Farewell, I will see you at Mrs. Dykman’s this evening.”
Hermia looked at the fire for some time after he had gone. She was
thankful that fate had arranged matters in such wise that she was not to
spend her life with Quintard. He could be, at times, the most
disagreeable man she had ever known, and there was not a grain of
sympathy in his nature. And, yes, he _was_ prosaic!
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