Since Kate had begun to write, a hundred--a thousand--half-forgotten
experiences had come back to her. As they returned to her memory, they
acquired significance. They related themselves with other incidents or
with opinions. They illustrated life, and however negligible in
themselves, they attained a value because of their relation to
the whole.
It was seldom that she felt lonely now. Her newly acquired power of
self-expression seemed to extend and supplement her personality. August
von Shierbrand had said that he wished to marry her because she
completed him. It had occurred to her at the time--though she suppressed
her inclination to say so--that she was born for other purposes than
completing him, or indeed anybody. She wished to think of herself as an
individual, not as an addendum. But, after all, she had sympathized with
the man. She was beginning to understand that that "solitude of the
soul," which one of her acquaintances, a sculptor, had put into
passionate marble, was caused from that sense of incompletion. It was
not alone that others failed one--it was self-failure, secret shame, all
the inevitable reticences, which contributed most to that.
She fell into the way of examining the men and women about her and of
asking:--
"Is he satisfied? Is she companioned? Has this one realized himself? Is
that one really living?"
She remembered one person--one only--who had given her the impression of
abounding physical, mental, and spiritual life. True, she had seen him
but a moment--one swift, absurd, curiously haunting moment. That was
Karl Wander, Honora's cousin, and the cousin of Mary Morrison. They were
the children of three sisters, and from what Kate knew of their
descendants' natures, she felt these sisters must have been palpitating
creatures.
Yes, Karl Wander had seemed complete--a happy man, seething with plans,
a wise man who took life as it came; a man of local qualities yet of
cosmopolitan spirit--one who would not have fretted at his environment
or counted it of much consequence, whatever it might have been.