What Charmides had told me filled me with great astonishment; it seemed
to me strange that I had not perceived the truth before. It made me feel
that I had somehow been wasting time. I was tempted to call Amroth to my
side, but I remembered what he had said, and I determined to resist the
impulse. I half expected to find that our strange talk, and the very
obvious disapproval of our words, had made some difference to me. But it
was not the case. I found myself treated with the same smiling welcome
as before, and indeed with an added kind of gentleness, such as older
people give to a child who has been confronted with some hard fact of
life, such as a sorrow or an illness. This in a way disconcerted me; for
in the moment when I had perceived the truth, there had come over me the
feeling that I ought in some way to bestir myself to preach, to warn,
to advise. But the idea of finding any sort of fault with these
contented, leisurely, interested people, seemed to me absurd, and so I
continued as before, half enjoying the life about me, and half bored by
it. It seemed so ludicrous in any way to pity the inhabitants of the
place, and yet I dimly saw that none of them could possibly continue
there. But I soon saw that there was no question of advice, because I
had nothing to advise. To ask them to be discontented, to suffer, to
inquire, seemed as absurd as to ask a man riding comfortably in a
carriage to get out and walk; and yet I felt that it was just that which
they needed. But one effect the incident had; it somehow seemed to draw
me more to Cynthia. There followed a time of very close companionship
with her. She sought me out, she began to confide in me, chattering
about her happiness and her delight in her surroundings, as a child
might chatter, and half chiding me, in a tender and pretty way, for not
being more at ease in the place. "You always seem to me," she said, "as
if you were only staying here, while I feel as if I could live here for
ever. Of course you are very kind and patient about it all, but you are
not at home--and I don't care a bit about your disapproval now." She
talked to me much about Lucius, who seemed to have a great attraction
for her. "He is all right," she said. "There is no nonsense about
him,--we understand each other; I don't get tired of him, and we like
the same things. I seem to know exactly what he feels about everything;
and that is one of the comforts of this place, that no one asks
questions or makes mischief; one can do just as one likes all the time.
I did not think, when I was alive, that there could be anything so
delightful as all this ahead of me."
"Do you never think--?" I began, but she put her hand to my lips, like a
child, to stop me, and said, "No, I never think, and I never mean to
think, of all the old hateful things. I never wilfully did any harm; I
only liked the people who liked me, and gave them all they asked--and
now I know that I did right, though in old days serious people used to
try to frighten me. God is very good to me," she went on, smiling, "to
allow me to be happy in my own way."
While we talked thus, sitting on a seat that overlooked the great
city--I had never seen it look so stately and beautiful, so full of all
that the heart could desire--Lucius himself drew near to us, smiling,
and seated himself the other side of Cynthia. "Now is not this
heavenly?" she said; "to be with the two people I like best--for you are
a faithful old thing, you know--and not to be afraid of anything
disagreeable or tiresome happening--not to have to explain or make
excuses, what could be better?"
"Yes," said Lucius, "it is happy enough," and he smiled at me in a
friendly way. "The pleasantest point is that one can _wait_ in this
charming place. In the old days, one was afraid of a hundred
things--money, weather, illness, criticism. One had to make love in a
hurry, because one missed the beautiful hour; and then there was the
horror of growing old. But now if Cynthia chooses to amuse herself with
other people, what do I care? She comes back as delightful as ever, and
it is only so much more to be amused about. One is not even afraid of
being lazy, and as for those ugly twinges of what one called
conscience--which were only a sort of rheumatism after all--that is all
gone too; and the delight of finding that one was right after all, and
that there were really no such things as consequences!"
I became aware, as Lucius spoke thus, in all his careless beauty, of a
vague trouble of soul. I seemed to foresee a kind of conflict between
myself and him. He felt it too, I was aware; for he drew Cynthia to him,
and said something to her; and presently they went off laughing, like a
pair of children, waving a farewell to me. I experienced a sense of
desolation, knowing in my mind that all was not well, and yet feeling so
powerless to contend with happiness so strong and wide.