"Haven't you often told me that I am stupid as an old geometry."
"And I hate geometry."
"You read, you write, you live, you love through your imagination. You
wrap the person you love in a rosy mist that is the breath of your
hopeful heart, and you see your hero through that mist. Of course the
mist fades and you have but the ugly outline--then, without stopping to
see what God hath wrought, you cry out, 'Oh, the horrible! the
dreadful!' and run away with your fingers in your ears."
A few silent steps, then she said, "I deserve that. It is all true. Why
did you not tell me before?"
"I left it to time and common sense."
"It will take a great deal of both to make me sensible," she answered
humbly, and then added, "if suffering would root out my fancies--but I am
like the child that tumbles and tumbles, and then tumbles again. I need
to be guided by such a steady hand. Sometimes I do long so for somebody
to do me good."
Her companion's silence might be sympathetic; as such she interpreted
it, or she could not have said what she never ceased wondering at
herself for saying--"I am not disappointed in love; but I _am_
disappointed in loving. I thought that love was once and forever. Poets
say so."
"Yes, but we do not know how they live their poetry."
"I know that my poetry fails me when extremity comes."
"Has the extremity come?"
"Yes," she said bravely.
"And that is another thing that I am not to know."
"Not for five and fifty years. I will pigeon-hole all my experiences for
you--if there is no one to object on my side or yours."
"What about the reading? Was it all that you expected?"
"Wait a minute; call Dine before we talk it over."
They had outwalked the others; Mr. Hammerton's strides would not be
pleasant to keep pace with in the long walk of life, as Dinah had once
told him. It was a truth that no one recognized so well as himself, that
he lacked the power of adaptation; he was too tall or too short, too
broad or too narrow, too crooked or too straight for any niche in
Dunellen, but the one that he had found in his boyhood by the snug, safe
corner in the home where Dinah was growing up to entangle herself in his
heart, and Tessa, lovable and wise, to enthrone herself in his
intellect. In the game of forfeits, when he had been doomed to "Bow to
the wittiest, kneel to the prettiest, and kiss the one you love the
best," in the long ago evenings, when they were all, old and young,
children together, he had always bowed to Tessa and knelt to bewitching
little Dine and kissed her. Now he bowed to Tessa, but he did not kiss
Dine.
They stood waiting near a lamp-post; he, fidgeting as usual, she,
straight and still.
"Lady Blue, you never put me on a pedestal, did you?"
"No, you never kept still long enough."
Professor Towne passed them with Mrs. Towne leaning upon his arm; Mrs.
Towne bowed and smiled, he lifted his hat in recognition of Tessa's
hesitating half inclination.
"Why, Tessa! Do you know him?"
"I almost spoke to him one day by mistake; I did not intend to bow, but
he looked at me--I suppose the bow bowed itself."
"He has a noble presence! He is altogether finer physically than his
cousin."
"I don't know that he is," she answered wilfully. Dinah came willingly
enough; they walked more slowly and talked.
"Tessa," began Dine abruptly as they were brushing their hair at
bedtime, "isn't Gus a fine talker?"
"Is he like Coleridge? He could talk four hours without interruption,
but sometimes his listeners, learned men too, did not understand a word
of it."
"I do not always understand Gus."
"Gus does not ramble; he is plain enough."
Dine brushed out a long curl and looked down upon it. "I shall ask him
to give me a list of books that I ought to read."
"I confess that while I understand what he says I do not understand
_him_. If you do, you are wiser than I."
"I guess that I am wiser than you."
"I used to think that I understood people; I have come to the conclusion
that I do not understand even my own self."
"Do you like garnet? I want a garnet in some material this winter. Gus
says that I am a butterfly."
"Yes, you are pretty in warm colors."
Tessa drew a chair to the open window and sat a long time leaning her
elbows on the sill with her face towards the Harrison Homestead. Felix
had always been so proud of the old house with its tiled chimney-pieces,
with its ancient crockery brought from Holland and the iron bound Bible
with the names of his ancestors; for two hundred years the place had
been held in the Harrison name, a great-great-grandfather having
purchased the land from the Indians. He had said once to her, "I have a
good old honest name to give to you, Tessa." She would have worn his
name worthily for his sake; if it might be,--but her father would hold
her back,--why should she not sacrifice herself? Was not Felix worthy of
her devotion? What other grander thing could she ever do? The moon was
rising; she changed her position to watch it and did not leave it until
it stood high above the apple orchard.