Agatha was at this time in her seventeenth year. She had a lively
perception of the foibles of others, and no reverence for her
seniors, whom she thought dull, cautious, and ridiculously amenable by
commonplaces. But she was subject to the illusion which disables youth
in spite of its superiority to age. She thought herself an exception.
Crediting Mr. Jansenius and the general mob of mankind with nothing
but a grovelling consciousness of some few material facts, she felt
in herself an exquisite sense and all-embracing conception of nature,
shared only by her favorite poets and heroes of romance and history.
Hence she was in the common youthful case of being a much better judge
of other people’s affairs than of her own. At the fellow-student who
adored some Henry or Augustus, not from the drivelling sentimentality
which the world calls love, but because this particular Henry or
Augustus was a phoenix to whom the laws that govern the relations of
ordinary lads and lasses did not apply, Agatha laughed in her sleeve.
The more she saw of this weakness in her fellows, the more satisfied she
was that, being forewarned, she was also forearmed against an attack of
it on herself, much as if a doctor were to conclude that he could not
catch smallpox because he had seen many cases of it; or as if a master
mariner, knowing that many ships are wrecked in the British channel,
should venture there without a pilot, thinking that he knew its perils
too well to run any risk of them. Yet, as the doctor might hold such
an opinion if he believed himself to be constituted differently from
ordinary men; or the shipmaster adopt such a course under the impression
that his vessel was a star, Agatha found false security in the
subjective difference between her fellows seen from without and herself
known from within. When, for instance, she fell in love with Mr.
Jefferson Smilash (a step upon which she resolved the day after the
storm), her imagination invested the pleasing emotion with a sacredness
which, to her, set it far apart and distinct from the frivolous fancies
of which Henry and Augustus had been the subject, and she the confidant.
“I can look at him quite coolly and dispassionately,” she said to
herself. “Though his face has a strange influence that must, I know,
correspond to some unexplained power within me, yet it is not a perfect
face. I have seen many men who are, strictly speaking, far handsomer. If
the light that never was on sea or land is in his eyes, yet they are
not pretty eyes--not half so clear as mine. Though he wears his common
clothes with a nameless grace that betrays his true breeding at every
step, yet he is not tall, dark, and melancholy, as my ideal hero would
be if I were as great a fool as girls of my age usually are. If I am in
love, I have sense enough not to let my love blind my judgment.”
She did not tell anyone of her new interest in life. Strongest in that
student community, she had used her power with good-nature enough to
win the popularity of a school leader, and occasionally with
unscrupulousness enough to secure the privileges of a school bully.
Popularity and privilege, however, only satisfied her when she was in
the mood for them. Girls, like men, want to be petted, pitied, and made
much of, when they are diffident, in low spirits, or in unrequited love.
These are services which the weak cannot render to the strong and which
the strong will not render to the weak, except when there is also a
difference of sex. Agatha knew by experience that though a weak woman
cannot understand why her stronger sister should wish to lean upon her,
she may triumph in the fact without understanding it, and give chaff
instead of consolation. Agatha wanted to be understood and not to be
chaffed. Finding herself unable to satisfy both these conditions, she
resolved to do without sympathy and to hold her tongue. She had often
had to do so before, and she was helped on this occasion by a sense of
the ridiculous appearance her passion might wear in the vulgar eye. Her
secret kept itself, as she was supposed in the college to be insensible
to the softer emotions. Love wrought no external change upon her. It
made her believe that she had left her girlhood behind her and was now
a woman with a newly-developed heart capacity at which she would
childishly have scoffed a little while before. She felt ashamed of the
bee on the window pane, although it somehow buzzed as frequently as
before in spite of her. Her calendar, formerly a monotonous cycle of
class times, meal times, play times, and bed time, was now irregularly
divided by walks past the chalet and accidental glimpses of its tenant.
Early in December came a black frost, and navigation on the canal
was suspended. Wickens’s boy was sent to the college with news that
Wickens’s pond would bear, and that the young ladies should be welcome
at any time. The pond was only four feet deep, and as Miss Wilson set
much store by the physical education of her pupils, leave was given for
skating. Agatha, who was expert on the ice, immediately proposed that a
select party should go out before breakfast next morning. Actions not in
themselves virtuous often appear so when performed at hours that compel
early rising, and some of the candidates for the Cambridge Local, who
would not have sacrificed the afternoon to amusement, at once fell in
with her suggestion. But for them it might never have been carried out;
for when they summoned Agatha, at half-past six next morning, to leave
her warm bed and brave the biting air, she would have refused without
hesitation had she not been shamed into compliance by these laborious
ones who stood by her bedside, blue-nosed and hungry, but ready for the
ice. When she had dressed herself with much shuddering and chattering,
they allayed their internal discomfort by a slender meal of biscuits,
got their skates, and went out across the rimy meadows, past patient
cows breathing clouds of steam, to Wickens’s pond. Here, to their
surprise, was Smilash, on electro-plated acme skates, practicing
complicated figures with intense diligence. It soon appeared that his
skill came short of his ambition; for, after several narrow escapes and
some frantic staggering, his calves, elbows, and occiput smote the ice
almost simultaneously. On rising ruefully to a sitting posture he
became aware that eight young ladies were watching his proceedings with
interest.
“This comes of a common man putting himself above his station by getting
into gentlemen’s skates,” he said. “Had I been content with a humble
slide, as my fathers was, I should ha’ been a happier man at the present
moment.” He sighed, rose, touched his hat to Miss Ward, and took off his
skates, adding: “Good-morning, Miss. Miss Wilson sent me word to be here
sharp at six to put on the young ladies’ skates, and I took the liberty
of trying a figure or two to keep out the cold.”
“Miss Wilson did not tell me that she ordered you to come,” said Miss
Ward.
“Just like her to be thoughtful and yet not let on to be! She is a
kind lady, and a learned--like yourself, Miss. Sit yourself down on the
camp-stool and give me your heel, if I may be so bold as to stick a
gimlet into it.”
His assistance was welcome, and Miss Ward allowed him to put on her
skates. She was a Canadian, and could skate well. Jane, the first
to follow her, was anxious as to the strength of the ice; but when
reassured, she acquitted herself admirably, for she was proficient in
outdoor exercises, and had the satisfaction of laughing in the field at
those who laughed at her in the study. Agatha, contrary to her custom,
gave way to her companions, and her boots were the last upon which
Smilash operated.
“How d’you do, Miss Wylie?” he said, dropping the Smilash manner now
that the rest were out of earshot.
“I am very well, thank you,” said Agatha, shy and constrained. This
phase of her being new to him, he paused with her heel in his hand and
looked up at her curiously. She collected herself, returned his gaze
steadily, and said: “How did Miss Wilson send you word to come? She only
knew of our party at half-past nine last night.”
“Miss Wilson did not send for me.”
“But you have just told Miss Ward that she did.”
“Yes. I find it necessary to tell almost as many lies now that I am a
simple laborer as I did when I was a gentleman. More, in fact.”
“I shall know how much to believe of what you say in the future.”
“The truth is this. I am perhaps the worst skater in the world, and
therefore, according to a natural law, I covet the faintest distinction
on the ice more than immortal fame for the things in which nature has
given me aptitude to excel. I envy that large friend of yours--Jane
is her name, I think--more than I envy Plato. I came down here this
morning, thinking that the skating world was all a-bed, to practice in
secret.”
“I am glad we caught you at it,” said Agatha maliciously, for he was
disappointing her. She wanted him to be heroic in his conversation; and
he would not.
“I suppose so,” he replied. “I have observed that Woman’s dearest
delight is to wound Man’s self-conceit, though Man’s dearest delight is
to gratify hers. There is at least one creature lower than Man. Now, off
with you. Shall I hold you until your ankles get firm?”
“Thank you,” she said, disgusted: “_I_ can skate pretty well, and I
don’t think you could give me any useful assistance.” And she went off
cautiously, feeling that a mishap would be very disgraceful after such a
speech.
He stood on the shore, listening to the grinding, swaying sound of the
skates, and watching the growing complexity of the curves they were
engraving on the ice. As the girls grew warm and accustomed to the
exercise they laughed, jested, screamed recklessly when they came into
collision, and sailed before the wind down the whole length of the pond
at perilous speed. The more animated they became, the gloomier looked
Smilash. “Not two-penn’orth of choice between them and a parcel of
puppies,” he said; “except that some of them are conscious that there
is a man looking at them, although he is only a blackguard laborer. They
remind me of Henrietta in a hundred ways. Would I laugh, now, if the
whole sheet of ice were to burst into little bits under them?”
Just then the ice cracked with a startling report, and the skaters,
except Jane, skimmed away in all directions.
“You are breaking the ice to pieces, Jane,” said Agatha, calling from a
safe distance. “How can you expect it to bear your weight?”
“Pack of fools!” retorted Jane indignantly. “The noise only shows how
strong it is.”
The shock which the report had given Smilash answered him his question.
“Make a note that wishes for the destruction of the human race, however
rational and sincere, are contrary to nature,” he said, recovering his
spirits. “Besides, what a precious fool I should be if I were working at
an international association of creatures only fit for destruction! Hi,
lady! One word, Miss!” This was to Miss Ward, who had skated into his
neighborhood. “It bein’ a cold morning, and me havin’ a poor and common
circulation, would it be looked on as a liberty if I was to cut a slide
here or take a turn in the corner all to myself?”
“You may skate over there if you wish,” she said, after a pause for
consideration, pointing to a deserted spot at the leeward end of the
pond, where the ice was too rough for comfortable skating.
“Nobly spoke!” he cried, with a grin, hurrying to the place indicated,
where, skating being out of the question, he made a pair of slides,
and gravely exercised himself upon them until his face glowed and his
fingers tingled in the frosty air. The time passed quickly; when Miss
Ward sent for him to take off her skates there was a general groan and
declaration that it could not possibly be half-past eight o’clock yet.
Smilash knelt before the camp-stool, and was presently busy unbuckling
and unscrewing. When Jane’s turn came, the camp-stool creaked beneath
her weight. Agatha again remonstrated with her, but immediately
reproached herself with flippancy before Smilash, to whom she wished to
convey an impression of deep seriousness of character.
“Smallest foot of the lot,” he said critically, holding Jane’s foot
between his finger and thumb as if it were an art treasure which he had
been invited to examine. “And belonging to the finest built lady.”
Jane snatched away her foot, blushed, and said:
“Indeed! What next, I wonder?”
“T’other ‘un next,” he said, setting to work on the remaining skate.
When it was off, he looked up at her, and she darted a glance at him as
she rose which showed that his compliment (her feet were, in fact, small
and pretty) was appreciated.
“Allow me, Miss,” he said to Gertrude, who was standing on one leg,
leaning on Agatha, and taking off her own skates.
“No, thank you,” she said coldly. “I don’t need your assistance.”
“I am well aware that the offer was overbold,” he replied, with a
self-complacency that made his profession of humility exasperating. “If
all the skates is off, I will, by Miss Wilson’s order, carry them and
the camp-stool back to the college.”
Miss Ward handed him her skates and turned away. Gertrude placed hers
on the stool and went with Miss Ward. The rest followed, leaving him to
stare at the heap of skates and consider how he should carry them. He
could think of no better plan than to interlace the straps and hang them
in a chain over his shoulder. By the time he had done this the young
ladies were out of sight, and his intention of enjoying their society
during the return to the college was defeated. They had entered the
building long before he came in sight of it.
Somewhat out of conceit with his folly, he went to the servants’
entrance and rang the bell there. When the door was opened, he saw Miss
Ward standing behind the maid who admitted him.
“Oh,” she said, looking at the string of skates as if she had hardly
expected to see them again, “so you have brought our things back?”
“Such were my instructions,” he said, taken aback by her manner. “You
had no instructions. What do you mean by getting our skates into your
charge under false pretences? I was about to send the police to take
them from you. How dare you tell me that you were sent to wait on me,
when you know very well that you were nothing of the sort?”
“I couldn’t help it, Miss,” he replied submissively. “I am a natural
born liar--always was. I know that it must appear dreadful to you that
never told a lie, and don’t hardly know what a lie is, belonging as you
do to a class where none is ever told. But common people like me tells
lies just as a duck swims. I ask your pardon, Miss, most humble, and I
hope the young ladies’ll be able to tell one set of skates from t’other;
for I’m blest if I can.”
“Put them down. Miss Wilson wishes to speak to you before you go. Susan,
show him the way.”
“Hope you ain’t been and got a poor cove into trouble, Miss?”
“Miss Wilson knows how you have behaved.”
He smiled at her benevolently and followed Susan upstairs. On their way
they met Jane, who stole a glance at him, and was about to pass by, when
he said:
“Won’t you say a word to Miss Wilson for a poor common fellow, honored
young lady? I have got into dreadful trouble for having made bold to
assist you this morning.”
“You needn’t give yourself the pains to talk like that,” replied Jane in
an impetuous whisper. “We all know that you’re only pretending.”
“Well, you can guess my motive,” he whispered, looking tenderly at her.
“Such stuff and nonsense! I never heard of such a thing in my life,”
said Jane, and ran away, plainly understanding that he had disguised
himself in order to obtain admission to the college and enjoy the
happiness of looking at her.
“Cursed fool that I am!” he said to himself; “I cannot act like a
rational creature for five consecutive minutes.”
The servant led him to the study and announced, “The man, if you please,
ma’am.”
“Jeff Smilash,” he added in explanation.
“Come in,” said Miss Wilson sternly.
He went in, and met the determined frown which she cast on him from her
seat behind the writing table, by saying courteously:
“Good-morning, Miss Wilson.”
She bent forward involuntarily, as if to receive a gentleman. Then she
checked herself and looked implacable.
“I have to apologize,” he said, “for making use of your name
unwarrantably this morning--telling a lie, in fact. I happened to
be skating when the young ladies came down, and as they needed
some assistance which they would hardly have accepted from a common
man--excuse my borrowing that tiresome expression from our acquaintance
Smilash--I set their minds at ease by saying that you had sent for me.
Otherwise, as you have given me a bad character--though not worse than
I deserve--they would probably have refused to employ me, or at least I
should have been compelled to accept payment, which I, of course, do not
need.”
Miss Wilson affected surprise. “I do not understand you,” she said.
“Not altogether,” he said smiling. “But you understand that I am what is
called a gentleman.”
“No. The gentlemen with whom I am conversant do not dress as you dress,
nor speak as you speak, nor act as you act.”
He looked at her, and her countenance confirmed the hostility of her
tone. He instantly relapsed into an aggravated phase of Smilash.
“I will no longer attempt to set myself up as a gentleman,” he said. “I
am a common man, and your ladyship’s hi recognizes me as such and is not
to be deceived. But don’t go for to say that I am not candid when I am
as candid as ever you will let me be. What fault, if any, do you
find with my putting the skates on the young ladies, and carryin’ the
campstool for them?”
“If you are a gentleman,” said Miss Wilson, reddening, “your conduct in
persisting in these antics in my presence is insulting to me. Extremely
so.”
“Miss Wilson,” he replied, unruffled, “if you insist on Smilash, you
shall have Smilash; I take an insane pleasure in personating him. If you
want Sidney--my real Christian name--you can command him. But allow me
to say that you must have either one or the other. If you become frank
with me, I will understand that you are addressing Sidney. If distant
and severe, Smilash.”
“No matter what your name may be,” said Miss Wilson, much annoyed, “I
forbid you to come here or to hold any communication whatever with the
young ladies in my charge.”
“Why?”
“Because I choose.”
“There is much force in that reason, Miss Wilson; but it is not moral
force in the sense conveyed by your college prospectus, which I have
read with great interest.”
Miss Wilson, since her quarrel with Agatha, had been sore on the
subject of moral force. “No one is admitted here,” she said, “without
a trustworthy introduction or recommendation. A disguise is not a
satisfactory substitute for either.”
“Disguises are generally assumed for the purpose of concealing crime,”
he remarked sententiously.
“Precisely so,” she said emphatically.
“Therefore, I bear, to say the least, a doubtful character.
Nevertheless, I have formed with some of the students here a slight
acquaintance, of which, it seems, you disapprove. You have given me no
good reason why I should discontinue that acquaintance, and you
cannot control me except by your wish--a sort of influence not usually
effective with doubtful characters. Suppose I disregard your wish, and
that one or two of your pupils come to you and say: ‘Miss Wilson, in our
opinion Smilash is an excellent fellow; we find his conversation most
improving. As it is your principle to allow us to exercise our own
judgment, we intend to cultivate the acquaintance of Smilash.’ How will
you act in that case?”
“Send them home to their parents at once.”
“I see that your principles are those of the Church of England. You
allow the students the right of private judgment on condition that
they arrive at the same conclusions as you. Excuse my saying that the
principles of the Church of England, however excellent, are not those
your prospectus led me to hope for. Your plan is coercion, stark and
simple.”
“I do not admit it,” said Miss Wilson, ready to argue, even with
Smilash, in defence of her system. “The girls are quite at liberty to
act as they please, but I reserve my equal liberty to exclude them from
my college if I do not approve of their behavior.”
“Just so. In most schools children are perfectly at liberty to learn
their lessons or not, just as they please; but the principal reserves an
equal liberty to whip them if they cannot repeat their tasks.”
“I do not whip my pupils,” said Miss Wilson indignantly. “The comparison
is an outrage.”
“But you expel them; and, as they are devoted to you and to the place,
expulsion is a dreaded punishment. Yours is the old system of making
laws and enforcing them by penalties, and the superiority of Alton
College to other colleges is due, not to any difference of system,
but to the comparative reasonableness of its laws and the mildness and
judgment with which they are enforced.”
“My system is radically different from the old one. However, I will not
discuss the matter with you. A mind occupied with the prejudices of the
old coercive despotism can naturally only see in the new a modification
of the old, instead of, as my system is, an entire reversal or
abandonment of it.”
He shook his head sadly and said: “You seek to impose your ideas on
others, ostracizing those who reject them. Believe me, mankind has been
doing nothing else ever since it began to pay some attention to ideas.
It has been said that a benevolent despotism is the best possible form
of government. I do not believe that saying, because I believe another
one to the effect that hell is paved with benevolence, which most
people, the proverb being too deep for them, misinterpret as unfulfilled
intentions. As if a benevolent despot might not by any error of judgment
destroy his kingdom, and then say, like Romeo when he got his friend
killed, ‘I thought all for the best!’ Excuse my rambling. I meant to
say, in short, that though you are benevolent and judicious you are none
the less a despot.”
Miss Wilson, at a loss for a reply, regretted that she had not, before
letting him gain so far on her, dismissed him summarily instead of
tolerating a discussion which she did not know how to end with dignity.
He relieved her by adding unexpectedly:
“Your system was the cause of my absurd marriage. My wife acquired a
degree of culture and reasonableness from her training here which made
her seem a superior being among the chatterers who form the female
seasoning in ordinary society. I admired her dark eyes, and was only too
glad to seize the excuse her education offered me for believing her a
match for me in mind as well as in body.”
Miss Wilson, astonished, determined to tell him coldly that her time was
valuable. But curiosity took possession of her in the act of utterance,
and the words that came were, “Who was she?”
“Henrietta Jansenius. She is Henrietta Trefusis, and I am Sidney
Trefusis, at your mercy. I see I have aroused your compassion at last.”
“Nonsense!” said Miss Wilson hastily; for her surprise was indeed tinged
by a feeling that he was thrown away on Henrietta.
“I ran away from her and adopted this retreat and this disguise in order
to avoid her. The usual rebuke to human forethought followed. I ran
straight into her arms--or rather she ran into mine. You remember the
scene, and were probably puzzled by it.”
“You seem to think your marriage contract a very light matter, Mr.
Trefusis. May I ask whose fault was the separation? Hers, of course.”
“I have nothing to reproach her with. I expected to find her temper
hasty, but it was not so--her behavior was unexceptionable. So was mine.
Our bliss was perfect, but unfortunately, I was not made for domestic
bliss--at all events I could not endure it--so I fled, and when she
caught me again I could give no excuse for my flight, though I made it
clear to her that I would not resume our connubial relations just yet.
We parted on bad terms. I fully intended to write her a sweet letter
to make her forgive me in spite of herself, but somehow the weeks have
slipped away and I am still fully intending. She has never written, and
I have never written. This is a pretty state of things, isn’t it, Miss
Wilson, after all her advantages under the influence of moral force and
the movement for the higher education of women?”
“By your own admission, the fault seems to lie upon your moral training
and not upon hers.”
“The fault was in the conditions of our association. Why they should
have attracted me so strongly at first, and repelled me so horribly
afterwards, is one of those devil’s riddles which will not be answered
until we shall have traced all the yet unsuspected reactions of our
inveterate dishonesty. But I am wasting your time, I fear. You sent
for Smilash, and I have responded by practically annihilating him. In
public, however, you must still bear with his antics. One moment more.
I had forgotten to ask you whether you are interested in the shepherd
whose wife you sheltered on the night of the storm?”
“He assured me, before he took his wife away, that he was comfortably
settled in a lodging in Lyvern.”
“Yes. Very comfortably settled indeed. For half-a-crown a week he
obtained permission to share a spacious drawing-room with two other
families in a ten-roomed house in not much better repair than his
blown-down hovel. This house yields to its landlord over two hundred
a year, or rather more than the rent of a commodious mansion in South
Kensington. It is a troublesome rent to collect, but on the other
hand there is no expenditure for repairs or sanitation, which are not
considered necessary in tenement houses. Our friend has to walk three
miles to his work and three miles back. Exercise is a capital thing for
a student or a city clerk, but to a shepherd who has been in the fields
all day, a long walk at the end of his work is somewhat too much of a
good thing. He begged for an increase of wages to compensate him for
the loss of the hut, but Sir John pointed out to him that if he was not
satisfied his place could be easily filled by less exorbitant shepherds.
Sir John even condescended to explain that the laws of political economy
bind employers to buy labor in the cheapest market, and our poor friend,
just as ignorant of economics as Sir John, of course did not know that
this was untrue. However, as labor is actually so purchased everywhere
except in Downing Street and a few other privileged spots, I suggested
that our friend should go to some place where his market price would be
higher than in merry England. He was willing enough to do so, but unable
from want of means. So I lent him a trifle, and now he is on his way to
Australia. Workmen are the geese that lay the golden eggs, but they fly
away sometimes. I hear a gong sounding, to remind me of the fight of
time and the value of your share of it. Good-morning!”
Miss Wilson was suddenly moved not to let him go without an appeal to
his better nature. “Mr. Trefusis,” she said, “excuse me, but are you
not, in your generosity to others a little forgetful of your duty to
yourself; and--”
“The first and hardest of all duties!” he exclaimed. “I beg your pardon
for interrupting you. It was only to plead guilty.”
“I cannot admit that it is the first of all duties, but it is sometimes
perhaps the hardest, as you say. Still, you could surely do yourself
more justice without any great effort. If you wish to live humbly, you
can do so without pretending to be an uneducated man and without
taking an irritating and absurd name. Why on earth do you call yourself
Smilash?”
“I confess that the name has been a failure. I took great pains, in
constructing it, to secure a pleasant impression. It is not a mere
invention, but a compound of the words smile and eyelash. A smile
suggests good humor; eyelashes soften the expression and are the only
features that never blemish a face. Hence Smilash is a sound that should
cheer and propitiate. Yet it exasperates. It is really very odd that it
should have that effect, unless it is that it raises expectations which
I am unable to satisfy.”
Miss Wilson looked at him doubtfully. He remained perfectly grave. There
was a pause. Then, as if she had made up her mind to be offended, she
said, “Good-morning,” shortly.
“Good-morning, Miss Wilson. The son of a millionaire, like the son of a
king, is seldom free from mental disease. I am just mad enough to be a
mountebank. If I were a little madder, I should perhaps really believe
myself Smilash instead of merely acting him. Whether you ask me to
forget myself for a moment, or to remember myself for a moment, I
reply that I am the son of my father, and cannot. With my egotism, my
charlatanry, my tongue, and my habit of having my own way, I am fit for
no calling but that of saviour of mankind--just of the sort they like.”
After an impressive pause he turned slowly and left the room.
“I wonder,” he said, as he crossed the landing, “whether, by judiciously
losing my way, I can catch a glimpse of that girl who is like a golden
idol?”
Downstairs, on his way to the door, he saw Agatha coming towards
him, occupied with a book which she was tossing up to the ceiling and
catching. Her melancholy expression, habitual in her lonely moments,
showed that she was not amusing herself, but giving vent to her
restlessness. As her gaze travelled upward, following the flight of
the volume, it was arrested by Smilash. The book fell to the floor. He
picked it up and handed it to her, saying:
“And, in good time, here is the golden idol!”
“What?” said Agatha, confused.
“I call you the golden idol,” he said. “When we are apart I always
imagine your face as a face of gold, with eyes and teeth of bdellium,
or chalcedony, or agate, or any wonderful unknown stones of appropriate
colors.”
Agatha, witless and dumb, could only look down deprecatingly.
“You think you ought to be angry with me, and you do not know exactly
how to make me feel that you are so. Is that it?”
“No. Quite the contrary. At least--I mean that you are wrong. I am the
most commonplace person you can imagine--if you only knew. No matter
what I may look, I mean.”
“How do you know that you are commonplace?”
“Of course I know,” said Agatha, her eyes wandering uneasily.
“Of course you do not know; you cannot see yourself as others see you.
For instance, you have never thought of yourself as a golden idol.”
“But that is absurd. You are quite mistaken about me.”
“Perhaps so. I know, however, that your face is not really made of gold
and that it has not the same charm for you that it has for others--for
me.”
“I must go,” said Agatha, suddenly in haste.
“When shall we meet again?”
“I don’t know,” she said, with a growing sense of alarm. “I really must
go.”
“Believe me, your hurry is only imaginary. Do you fancy that you are
behaving in a manner of quite ubdued ardor that affected Agatha
strangely.
“But first tell me whether it is new to you or not.”
“It is not an emotion at all. I did not say that it was.”
“Do not be afraid of it. It is only being alone with a man whom you have
bewitched. You would be mistress of the situation if you only knew how
to manage a lover. It is far easier than managing a horse, or skating,
or playing the piano, or half a dozen other feats of which you think
nothing.”
Agatha colored and raised her head.
“Forgive me,” he said, interrupting the action. “I am trying to offend
you in order to save myself from falling in love with you, and I have
not the heart to let myself succeed. On your life, do not listen to me
or believe me. I have no right to say these things to you. Some fiend
enters into me when I am at your side. You should wear a veil, Agatha.”
She blushed, and stood burning and tingling, her presence of mind gone,
and her chief sensation one of relief to hear--for she did not dare
to see--that he was departing. Her consciousness was in a delicious
confusion, with the one definite thought in it that she had won her
lover at last. The tone of Trefusis’s voice, rich with truth and
earnestness, his quick insight, and his passionate warning to her not to
heed him, convinced her that she had entered into a relation destined to
influence her whole life.
“And yet,” she said remorsefully, “I cannot love him as he loves me.
I am selfish, cold, calculating, worldly, and have doubted until now
whether such a thing as love really existed. If I could only love him
recklessly and wholly, as he loves me!”
Smilash was also soliloquizing as he went on his way.
“Now I have made the poor child--who was so anxious that I should not
mistake her for a supernaturally gifted and lovely woman as happy as an
angel; and so is that fine girl whom they call Jane Carpenter. I hope
they won’t exchange confidences on the subject.”