Colville did not venture any reply to a demand evidently addressed to her own conscience.
But when she asked if he really thought he had better go away, he said, “Oh no; that was a mistake.”
“Because, if you do, you shall—to punish me.”
“My dearest girl, why should I wish to punish you?”
“Because I’ve been low and mean. Now I want you to do something for Mrs. Bowen—something to amuse her; to show that we appreciate her. And I don’t want you to sympathise with me at all. When I ask for your sympathy, it’s a sign that I don’t deserve it.”
“Is that so?”
“Oh, be serious with me. I mean it. And I want to beg your pardon for something.”
“Yes; what’s that?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“No.”
“You needn’t have your lapels silk-lined. You needn’t wear boutonnières.”
“Oh, but I’ve had the coat changed.”
“No matter! Change it back! It isn’t for me to make you over. I must make myself over. It’s my right, it’s my sacred privilege to conform to you in every way, and I humble myself in the dust for having forgotten it at the very start. Oh, do you think I can ever be worthy of you? I will try; indeed I will! I shall not wear my light dresses another time! From this out, I shall dress more in keeping with you. I boasted that I should live to comfort and console you, to recompense you for the past, and what have I been doing? Wearying and degrading you!”
“Oh no,” pleaded Colville. “I am very comfortable. I don’t need any compensation for the past. I need—sleep. I’m going to bed tonight at eight o’clock, and I am going to sleep twenty-four hours. Then I shall be fresh for Mrs. Fleming’s ball.”
“I’m not going,” said Imogene briefly.
“Oh yes, you are. I’ll come round tomorrow evening and see.”
“No. There are to be no more parties.”
“Why?”
“I can’t endure them.”
She was looking at him and talking at him, but she seemed far aloof in the abstraction of a sublime regret; she seemed puzzled, bewildered at herself.
Colville got away. He felt the pathos of the confusion and question to which he left her, but he felt himself powerless against it. There was but one solution to it all, and that was impossible. He could only grieve over her trouble, and wait; grieve for the irrevocable loss which made her trouble remote and impersonal to him, and submit.
XVIII
The young clergyman whom Colville saw talking to Imogene on his first evening at Mrs. Bowen’s had come back from Rome, where he had been spending a month or two, and they began to meet at Palazzo Pinti again. If they got on well enough together, they did not get on very far. The suave house-priest manners of the young clergyman offended Colville; he could hardly keep from sneering at his taste in art and books, which in fact was rather conventional; and no doubt Mr. Morton had his own reserves, under which he was perfectly civil, and only too deferential to Colville, as to an older man. Since his return, Mrs. Bowen had come back to her salon. She looked haggard; but she did what she could to look otherwise. She was always polite to Colville, and she was politely cordial with the clergyman. Sometimes Colville saw her driving out with him and Effie; they appeared to make excursions, and he had an impression, very obscure, that Mrs. Bowen lent the young clergyman money; that he was a superstition of hers, and she a patron of his; he must have been ten years younger than she; not more than twenty-five.
The first Sunday after his return, Colville walked home with Mr. Waters from hearing a sermon of Mr. Morton’s, which they agreed was rather well judged, and simply and fitly expressed.
“And he spoke with the authority of the priest,” said the old minister. “His Church alone of all the Protestant Churches has preserved that to its ministers. Sometimes I have thought it was a great thing.”
“Not always?” asked Colville, with a smile.
“These things are matters of mood rather than conviction with me,” returned Mr. Waters. “Once they affected me very deeply; but now I shall so soon know all about it that they don’t move me. But at times I think that if I were to live my life over again, I would prefer to be of some formal, some inflexibly ritualised, religion. At solemnities—weddings and funerals—I have been impressed with the advantage of the Anglican rite: it is the Church speaking to and for humanity—or seems so,” he added, with cheerful indifference. “Something in its favour,” he continued, after a while, “is the influence that every ritualised faith has with women. If they apprehend those mysteries more subtly than we, such a preference of theirs must mean a good deal. Yes; the other Protestant systems are men’s systems. Women must have form. They don’t care for freedom.”
“They appear to like the formalist too, as well as the form,” said Colville, with scorn not obviously necessary.
“Oh yes; they must have everything in the concrete,” said the old gentleman cheerfully.
“I wonder where Mr. Morton met Mrs. Bowen first,” said Colville.
“Here, I think. I believe he had letters to her. Before you came I used often to meet him at her house. I think she has helped him with money at times.”
“Isn’t that rather an unpleasant idea?”
“Yes; it’s disagreeable. And it places the ministry in a dependent attitude. But under our
