sudden revelation of man's character. We also have things to learn — there is matter for learning everywhere. Some day you will tell me the difference of what you think of me now, from what you thought when we first…?'
An impulse of double-minded acquiescence caused Clara to stammer as on a sob.
'I–I daresay I shall.'
She added, 'If it is necessary.'
Then she cried out: 'Why do you attack the world? You always make me pity it.'
He smiled at her youthfulness. 'I have passed through that stage. It leads to my sentiment. Pity it, by all means.'
'No,' said she, 'but pity it, side with it, not consider it so bad. The world has faults; glaciers have crevices, mountains have chasms; but is not the effect of the whole sublime? Not to admire the mountain and the glacier because they can be cruel, seems to me… And the world is beautiful.'
'The world of nature, yes. The world of men?'
'Yes.'
'My love, I suspect you to be thinking of the world of ballrooms.'
'I am thinking of the world that contains real and great generosity, true heroism. We see it round us.'
'We read of it. The world of the romance writer!'
'No: the living world. I am sure it is our duty to love it. I am sure we weaken ourselves if we do not. If I did not, I should be looking on mist, hearing a perpetual boom instead of music. I remember hearing Mr. Whitford say that cynicism is intellectual dandyism without the coxcomb's feathers; and it seems to me that cynics are only happy in making the world as barren to others as they have made it for themselves.'
'Old Vernon!' ejaculated Sir Willoughby, with a countenance rather uneasy, as if it had been flicked with a glove. 'He strings his phrases by the dozen.'
'Papa contradicts that, and says he is very clever and very simple.'
'As to cynics, my dear Clara, oh, certainly, certainly: you are right. They are laughable, contemptible. But understand me. I mean, we cannot feel, or if we feel we cannot so intensely feel, our oneness, except by dividing ourselves from the world.'
'Is it an art?'
'If you like. It is our poetry! But does not love shun the world? Two that love must have their sustenance in isolation.'
'No: they will be eating themselves up.'
'The purer the beauty, the more it will be out of the world.'
'But not opposed.'
'Put it in this way,' Willoughby condescended. 'Has experience the same opinion of the world as ignorance?'
'It should have more charity.'
'Does virtue feel at home in the world?'
'Where it should be an example, to my idea.'
'Is the world agreeable to holiness?'
'Then, are you in favour of monasteries?'
He poured a little runlet of half laughter over her head, of the sound assumed by genial compassion.
It is irritating to hear that when we imagine we have spoken to the point.
'Now in my letters, Clara…'
'I have no memory, Willoughby!'
'You will, however, have observed that I am not completely myself in my letters…'
'In your letters to men you may be.'
The remark threw a pause across his thoughts. He was of a sensitiveness terribly tender. A single stroke on it reverberated swellingly within the man, and most, and infuriately searching, at the spots where he had been wounded, especially where he feared the world might have guessed the wound. Did she imply that he had no hand for love-letters? Was it her meaning that women would not have much taste for his epistolary correspondence? She had spoken in the plural, with an accent on «men». Had she heard of Constantia? Had she formed her own judgement about the creature? The supernatural sensitiveness of Sir Willoughby shrieked a peal of affirmatives. He had often meditated on the moral obligation of his unfolding to Clara the whole truth of his conduct to Constantia; for whom, as for other suicides, there were excuses. He at least was bound to supply them. She had behaved badly; but had he not given her some cause? If so, manliness was bound to confess it.
Supposing Clara heard the world's version first! Men whose pride is their backbone suffer convulsions where other men are barely aware of a shock, and Sir Willoughby was taken with galvanic jumpings of the spirit within him, at the idea of the world whispering to Clara that he had been jilted.
'My letters to men, you say, my love?'
'Your letters of business.'
'Completely myself in my letters of business?' He stared indeed.
She relaxed the tension of his figure by remarking: 'You are able to express yourself to men as your meaning dictates. In writing to… to us it is, I suppose, more difficult.'
'True, my love. I will not exactly say difficult. I can acknowledge no difficulty. Language, I should say, is not fitted to express emotion. Passion rejects it.'
'For dumb-show and pantomime?'
'No; but the writing of it coldly.'
'Ah, coldly!'
'My letters disappoint you?'
'I have not implied that they do.'
'My feelings, dearest, are too strong for transcription. I feel, pen in hand, like the mythological Titan at war with Jove, strong enough to hurl mountains, and finding nothing but pebbles. The simile is a good one. You must not judge of me by my letters.'
'I do not; I like them,' said Clara.
She blushed, eyed him hurriedly, and seeing him complacent, resumed, 'I prefer the pebble to the mountain; but if you read poetry you would not think human speech incapable of…'
'My love, I detest artifice. Poetry is a profession.'
'Our poets would prove to you…'
'As I have often observed, Clara, I am no poet.'
'I have not accused you, Willoughby.'
'No poet, and with no wish to be a poet. Were I one, my life would supply material, I can assure you, my love. My conscience is not entirely at rest. Perhaps the heaviest matter troubling it is that in which I was least wilfully guilty. You have heard of a Miss Durham?'
'I have heard — yes — of her.'
'She may be happy. I trust she is. If she is not, I cannot escape some blame. An instance of the difference between myself and the world, now. The world charges it upon her. I have interceded to exonerate her.'
'That was generous, Willoughby.'
'Stay. I fear I was the primary offender. But I, Clara, I, under a sense of honour, acting under a sense of honour, would have carried my engagement through.'
'What had you done?'
'The story is long, dating from an early day, in the 'downy antiquity of my youth', as Vernon says.'
'Mr. Whitford says that?'
'One of old Vernon's odd sayings. It's a story of an early fascination.'
'Papa tells me Mr. Whitford speaks at times with wise humour.'
'Family considerations — the lady's health among other things; her position in the calculations of relatives — intervened. Still there was the fascination. I have to own it. Grounds for feminine jealousy.'
'Is it at an end?'
'Now? with you? my darling Clara! indeed at an end, or could I have opened my inmost heart to you! Could I have spoken of myself so unreservedly that in part you know me as I know myself! Oh, but would it have been possible to enclose you with myself in that intimate union? so secret, unassailable!'
