But it was not until four o'clock on the day of release that she found herself actually alone in her chilly and chaste boudoir on the higher hill; Mrs. Hofer escorted her home and remained for many last words. Then Isabel fell into a chair before the mounting fire and shut her eyes. Lady Victoria was out. Gwynne was not expected until the evening train. She wished that she had not promised to dine with the Stones at seven. The house was as silent as a tomb; but while she was still rejoicing in the sudden cessation of sound and motion, the door opened and Gwynne entered. She gave him a surly nod, and he explained that he had come down in the morning, in order to be at hand to welcome her; had even meditated going to her rescue. Isabel deigned no reply, and he took possession of a deep chair, settled himself on his backbone, and regarded her attentively.
"I am sorry you have not enjoyed your week as much as I have done," he observed. "The weather has been magnificent, and I have spent all the days out-of-doors, riding, walking, duck-shooting—taking liberties with your boat, and even your launch. I never enjoyed myself more—after such close study, and all the rest of it, I suppose. I must say you don't look very fit. You are pale instead of white, and—well—cross. Judging from those models of literary elegance and Christian charity, the San Francisco weekly society sheets—with which I whiled away that infernal train journey—you have been f阾ed like visiting royalty, photographed by the foremost in his art—which would appear to be the equivalent of painted for the Academy—and your family history seems to have been written up from old files, with even more picturesqueness than accuracy—"
"I wish you would keep still. You didn't talk half so much in England. I shall hate you if you become wholly American."
"I am a born egotist. Ask my mother. Or my long-suffering friends and constituents. You did all the talking at Capheaton—or gave me a wide berth. But here my mother neither talks nor listens—" He paused suddenly and lowered his voice. "Is anything the matter with my mother, do you think? I never saw any one so changed. Do you suppose she hates California and is staying here only on my account?—I have offered more than once to pay her bills; and she is used to them, anyway. For heaven's sake persuade her to go back and enjoy herself in her own fashion. I really don't need her—haven't time. And in spite of your liberal thorns and maddening incomprehensibilities, you can always put homesickness to flight. Sometimes I think she is ill, and then again she looks as fit as ever."
"She has developed nerves. All women get them sometime or other. And there is a certain order of women with whom beauty and fascination are a vocation. When those pass they hate life."
"What rot. No doubt she's a bit off her feed and restless. Probably the climate doesn't suit her. Heaven knows it is nervous enough. But I don't pretend to understand women. What's up with you? Didn't you enjoy being a belle, after all?"
"I was not a belle. I was a distinct failure."
"What?" Gwynne sat up and forward. "If you want to psychologize, fire away. It always interests me."
"I have no intention of psychologizing. I haven't had time to think. But I do know that a life lived all on the surface—and at lightning speed—doesn't suit me a bit." She gave him a rapid sketch of her week. "I was with them, but not of them; no doubt of that. Old Mr. Toole told me one day that I was a dreamer, and I am afraid that is the solution. I like to imagine myself doing things, but I don't like actually doing them. I found that out over and over again in Europe. I can't tell you how I have longed for a girl's good time here in San Francisco—denied all these years, and my birthright. I was bored everywhere. I cannot make talk; I can only talk spontaneously when I am interested. I couldn't even enjoy the dancing—for the prospect of entertaining those brats between times. And they were all afraid of me. I never could be a belle like either the old ones or the new ones; the fault lies wholly in myself, not in circumstances or materials. I don't really want it. No girl can be a social success unless she cares tremendously for it. Merely pretty girls are often popular, simply because popularity is the breath of life to them. I wouldn't try it again for anything on earth. I long to be at home watching the marsh, and not a soul to talk to. That was all I was made for. A dreamer! I am terribly disappointed."
"But Society is a mere phase. So is Stone's Bohemia. The town is full of clever people. You can select and form your own set—when you are ready."
"I am afraid I don't care about it. I dislike the actual effort. So long as Mr. Hofer and those men are talking I am interested, but even so I have enjoyed—far more—thinking about and planning to know them. I am nothing but a dreamer."
"And you have just discovered that?" asked Gwynne, curiously. "I may not have made an exhaustive study of woman, but up to a certain point I know you; and I have not waited for Father O'Toole to enlighten me. I could have told you that you would hate all this sort of thing. You had a mere taste of it in English country-houses, where entertaining has reached such a point of perfection that a man never feels so much at home as when in some one's else house. If you had waited for a London season you would have been as quickly disillusioned. You have the most impossible ideals—"
"I can realize them when I am alone," said Isabel, defiantly. "I shall be as happy as ever on the ranch, the day after to-morrow."
"That sort of happiness will do very well for a while—living in your imagination and all that. But what is it going to lead to?"
"Lead to? It is enough in itself."
"You can't live on moonshine for ever. I told you before that I understood your particular form of idealism; but although I believe that man will certainly be happier when he lives more within that structure of infinite variety, himself, less and less dependent upon the aggregations Life has devised for amusing and tormenting him, still we must reach that condition by very slow degrees; if we take it with a leap the result will be an ugly and disastrous selfishness. If you can prove to the world that you have found happiness in the cultivation of the higher faculties, you will serve a purpose in life, for you will encourage a certain class of women born with such serious lacks, in the health or the affections, or even in the power to endure the mere monotonies of married life, that they are better off alone; but who often feel themselves a failure and drop into morbidity and decay. That means contact for your highness, however. If you sit down by your marsh for the rest of your life and dream, you miss the whole point. And when time forced you to realize the uncompromising selfishness of such a life—where would your happiness be then?"
"Now you are talking by the book. Why are we so sure that it is a part of our duty to make others happy? That may be but one more superstition to rout. If we manage to be happy ourselves, and through the exercise of the higher faculties alone, we may be serving an end decreed from the beginning; by some subtle process, as incomprehensible as even the commonplaces of life, add to the sum of happiness, and so serve life far better than by scattering ourselves all over the surface. But I told you something of this before and have not forgotten the result."
"Neither have I, but one can get accustomed to any idea. What I want to know is—do you leave youth entirely out of your calculations?"
"Oh—youth! Well—it is possible I might not if I had not lived through its tragedy already—for which I am thankful."
"You have had romance and tragedy, and you are a very experienced young woman, but you have not had happiness," said Gwynne, shrewdly. "That, too, is a birthright, and sooner or later you will demand it. Social conquests have palled in seven days. In time chickens also will cease to satisfy, and books, and dreams, and sunsets, and liberty. The peculiar conditions and events of your first quarter-century demanded an interval before beginning again; and filled with all you have deliberately chosen—all, that is, but chickens, which are a work not of God but of supererogation. But intervals come to an end like other things. When this finishes you will suddenly demand happiness—the real thing."
"You mean that I will fall in love again, I suppose."
"I mean that you will love."
"Now you are hair-splitting. Are you qualifying to contribute fictionized essays to the American magazines?"
"I am stating facts and don't care a hang about sarcasm. Just now you have spasms when some aspect of nature exalts you. I have watched you with considerable amusement. But it is natural enough—merely a sort of forerunner of what will happen when nature establishes her currents with your own interior landscapes. Then there will be earthquakes and hurricanes—your cultivated realism and inherent romanticism will become hopelessly mixed, and you will be really happy."
"More likely, such moments are the forerunners of a state which shall be an eternal exaltation. Personal immortality is only to be desired if it insures the lifting of our faculties to their highest power of expression. Anything else would mean a boundless ennui. As for my present inertia, is it not the duty of some few to pass their lives in appreciation of the past? Heaven knows there are enough looking out for the present. And I am sick of the superstition that love is all. I told you before that the happiness of women, at least, depended upon relegating it to its proper place. Once I regretted that Prestage did not die while I still believed in him, so that I could have lived my life with his memory, as Concha Arg黣llo did with Rez醤ov's. But even that would have been a species of slavery, and I should have chafed at the bond; never had this divine sense of freedom."
"I pass over the majority of your arguments—I must sleep on them. But when have I maintained that love was all? If that were my doctrine should I be reading my head off, investing in Class A buildings, talking politics to farmers, and revolving plans for the conquest of California? I should be making love to you. That is what I should like to do, however, and what I propose to do when I am ready."
"Are you in love with me?"
"I hardly know, but I suspect that I shall be. If I deliberately choose you now as my life partner, you cannot complain that I am the mere slave of passion. I don't fancy I look it at this moment. I have had those fevers, and am willing to admit their brevity. No doubt if I had not been so occupied of late I should have had another. As it is, I am blessedly permitted to foresee it; and to keep my brain clear enough meanwhile to think for both of us."
"Very cousinly, but I can think for myself."
She had risen, but he stood with his back against the door for a moment.
"Another thing—" he said. "You need a buffer. You have remarkable powers, and you might realize some of your dreams if the prospect of initiatives did not alarm your secretly feminine soul. The two of us together could conquer the world. Now go ahead and dream until dreams pall and I have more time."