George had rowed to a point where a deep indentation in the shore of the river offered a broad expanse of water in which there was but little current. He rested on his oars, bending his head and leaning slightly forward. It seemed very hard that he should suddenly be called upon to decide so important a question as had just arisen, at the very moment when he was writing the most difficult and interesting part of his book. To go away 249was not only to deprive himself of many things which he liked, and among those Mamie’s own society had taken the foremost place of late; it meant also to break the current of his ideas and to arrest his own progress at the most critical juncture. He remembered with loathing the days he had spent in his little room in New York, cudgelling his inert brain and racking his imagination for a plot, a subject, for one single character, for anything of which he might make a beginning. And he looked back to a nearer time, and saw how easily his mind had worked amidst its new and pleasant surroundings. It is no wonder that he hesitated. Only the artist can understand his own interest in his art; only the writer, and the writer of real talent, can tell what acute suffering it is to be interrupted in the midst of a piece of good work, while its success is still uncertain in the balance of his mind and while he still depends largely upon outward circumstances for the peace and quiet which are necessary to serious mental labour.

George was not heroic, though there was a touch of quixotism in his nature. The temptation to stay where he was, had a force he had not expected. Moreover, whether he would or not, the expression he had twice seen in Mamie’s face on that afternoon, haunted him and fascinated him. He experienced the operation of a charm unknown before. He looked up and gazed at the young girl as she sat far back in the stern of the boat. She was not pretty, or at most, not more than half pretty. Her mouth was decidedly far too large, and her nose lacked outline. She had a fairly good forehead; he admitted that much, but her chin was too pointed and had little modelling in it, while her cheeks would have been decidedly uninteresting but for the extreme beauty of her complexion. She was looking down, and he could not see the grey eyes which were her best feature, but it could not be denied that the long dark drooping lashes and the strongly marked brown eyebrows contrasted very well with the transparent skin. Her hair was not 250bad, though it was impossible to say whether those little tangled ringlets were natural or were produced daily by the skilful appliance of artificial torsion. If her mouth was an exaggerated feature, at least the long, even lips were fresh and youthful, and, when parted, they disclosed a very perfect set of teeth. All this was true, and as George looked, he summed up the various points and decided that when Mamie wore her best expression, she might pass for a pretty girl.

But she possessed more than that. The catalogue did not explain her wonderful charm. It was not, indeed, complete, and as he glanced from her downcast face to the outlines of her shapely figure, he felt the sensation a man experiences in turning quickly from the examination of a common object, to the contemplation of one that is very beautiful. Psyche herself could have boasted no greater perfection of form and grace than belonged to this girl whose features were almost all insignificant. The triumph of proportion began at her throat, under the small ears that were set so close to the head, and the faultless lines continued throughout all the curves of beauty to the point of her exquisite foot, to the longest finger of her classic hand. Not a line was too short, not a line too long, there was no straightness in any one, and not one of them all followed too strong a curve.

George thought of Constance and made comparisons with a coolness that surprised himself. Constance was tall, straight, well grown, active; slight, indeed, but graceful enough, and gifted with much natural ease in motion. But that was all, so far as figure was concerned. George had seen a hundred girls with just the same advantages as Constance, and all far prettier than his cousin. Neither Constance nor any of them could compare with Mamie except in face. His eye rested on her now, when she was in repose, with untiring satisfaction, as his sight delighted in each new surprise of motion when she moved, whether on horseback, or walking, or at tennis. She represented to him the absolute ideal of 251refined animal life, combined with something spiritual that escaped definition, but which made itself felt in all she did and said.

When he thought of depriving himself for a long time of her society, he discovered that he admired her far more than he had suspected. It was admiration, but it was nothing more. He felt no pain at the suggestion of leaving her, but it seemed as though he were about to be robbed of some object familiar to him, to keep which was a source of unfailing, though indolent, satisfaction. He could not imagine himself angry, if some man of his acquaintance had married Mamie the next day, provided that he might talk to her as he pleased and watch her when he liked. There was not warmth enough in what he felt for her to kindle one spark of jealousy against any one whom she might choose for a husband.

But there was something added to the odd sort of attraction which the girl exercised over him, something which had only begun to influence him during the last quarter of an hour or less. She loved him, and he had just found it out. There is nothing more enviable than to love and be loved in return, and nothing more painful than to be loved to distraction by a person one dislikes. It may be said, perhaps, that nothing can be so disturbing to the judgment as to be loved by an individual to whom one feels oneself strongly attracted in a wholly different way. George Wood did not know exactly what was happening to him, and he did not feel himself able to judge his own case with any sort of impartiality; but his instinct told him to go away as soon as possible and to break off all intercourse with his cousin during some time to come. She had argued the question with him in her own way and had found answers to all he said, but he was not satisfied. It was his duty to leave Mamie, no matter at what cost, and he meant to go at once.

“My dear Mamie,” he said at last, still unconsciously admiring the grace of her attitude, “I am very sorry for myself, but there is only one way. I cannot stay here any longer.”

252She raised her eyes and looked steadily at him.

“On my account?” she asked.

“Yes, and you know I am right.”

“Because I have been foolish and—and—unmaidenly, I suppose.”

“Dear child—how you talk!” George exclaimed. “I never said anything of the kind!” He was seriously embarrassed to find an answer to her statement.

“Of course you did not say it. But you probably thought it, which is the same thing. After all, it is true, you know. But then, have I not a right to be foolish, if I please? I have known you so long.”

“Yes indeed!” George answered with alacrity, for he was glad to be able to agree with her in something. “It is a long time, as you say—ever since we were children together.”

“Then you think there was nothing so very bad about what I said?”

“It was thoughtless—I do not know what it was. There was certainly nothing bad in it, and besides, you did not mean it, you know, did you?”

“Then why do you want to go away?” inquired Mamie, with feminine logic, and candour.

“Why because——” George stopped as people often do, at that word, well knowing what he had been about to say, but now suddenly unwilling to say it. In fact, to say anything under the circumstances would have been a flagrant breach of tact. Since Mamie almost admitted that she had meant nothing, she had only been making fun of him and he could not well think of going away without seeming ridiculous in his own eyes.

“’Because,’ without anything after it, is only a woman’s reason,” said the young girl with a laugh.

“Women’s reasons are sometimes the best. At all events, I have often heard you say so.”

“I am often laughing at you, when I seem most in earnest, George. Have you never noticed that I have a fine talent for irony? Do you think that if I were very 253much in love with you, I would tell you so? How conceited you must be!”

“No indeed!” George asseverated. “I would not imagine that you could do such a thing. When I told you I would go away, I was only entering into the spirit of the thing and carrying on your idea.”

“It was very well done. I cannot help laughing at the serious face you made.”

“Nor I, at yours,” said the young man beginning to pull the boat slowly about.

Matters had taken a very unexpected turn and he began to feel his determination to depart oozing out of his fingers in a way he had not expected. His position, indeed, was absurd. He could not argue with Mamie the question of whether she had been in earnest or not. Therefore he was obliged to accept her statement, that she had been jesting. And if he did so, how could he humiliate her by showing that he still believed she loved him? In other words, by packing up his traps and taking a summary leave. He would only be making a laughing-stock of himself in her eyes. Nor was he altogether free from an unforeseen sensation of disappointment, very slight, very vague, and very embarrassing to his self-esteem. Look at it as he would, his vanity had been flattered by her confession, and it had also, in some way, appealed to his heart. To be loved by some one, as she had seemed to love, when that expression had passed over her face! The idea was pleasant, attractive, one on which he would dwell hereafter and which would stimulate his comprehension when he was describing scenes of love in his books.

“So of course you will stay and behave like a human being,” said Mamie, after a short pause, as though she had summed up the evidence, deliberated upon it and were giving the verdict.

“I suppose I shall,” George answered in a regretful tone, though he could not repress a smile.

“You seem to be sorry,” observed the young girl with 254a quick, laughing glance of her grey eyes. “If there are any other reasons for your sudden departure, it is quite another matter. The one you gave has turned out badly. You have not proved the necessity for ensuring my salvation by taking the next train.”

“I would have gone by the boat,” said George.

“Why?”

“Because the river would have reminded me to the last of this evening.”

“Do you want to be reminded of it as much as that?” asked Mamie.

“Since it turns out to have been such a very pleasant evening, after all,” George answered, glad to escape on any terms from the position in which his last thoughtless remark had placed him.

Mamie had shown considerable tact in the way by which she had recovered herself, and George was unconsciously grateful to her for having saved him from the necessity of an abrupt leave-taking, although he could not get rid of the idea that she had been more than half in earnest in the beginning.

“It was very well done,” he said after they had landed that evening and were walking up to the house through the flower garden.

“Yes,” Mamie answered. “I am a very good actress. They always say so in the private theatricals.”

The evening colour had gone from the sky and the moon was already in the sky, not yet at the full. Mamie stood still in the path and plucked a rose.

“I can act beautifully,” she said with a low laugh. “Would you like me to give you a little exhibition? Look at me—so—now the moonlight is on my face and you can see me.”

She, looked up into his eyes, and once more her features seemed to be transfigured. She laid one hand upon his arm and with the other hand raised the rose to her lips, kissed it, her eyes still fixed on his, then smiled and spoke three words in a low voice that seemed to send a thrill through the quiet air.

255“I love you.”

Then she made as though she would have fastened the flower in his white flannel jacket, and he, believing she would do it, and still looking at her, bent a little forward and held the buttonhole ready. All at once, she sprang back with a quick, graceful movement and laughed again.

“Was it not well done?” she cried, tossing the rose far away into one of the beds.

“Admirably,” George answered. “I never saw anything equal to it. How you must have studied!”

“For years,” said the young girl, speaking in her usual tone and beginning to walk by his side towards the house.

It was certainly very strange, George thought, that she should be able to assume such an expression and such a tone of voice at a moment’s notice, if there were no real love in her heart. But it was impossible to quarrel with the way she had done it. There had been something so supremely graceful in her attitude, something so winning in her smile, something in her accent which so touched the heart, that the incident remained fixed in his memory as a wonderful picture, never to be forgotten. It affected his artistic sense so strongly that before he went to bed he took his pen and wrote it down, taking a keen pleasure in putting into shape the details of the scene, and especially in describing what escaped description, the mysterious fascination of the girl herself. He read it over in bed, was satisfied with it, thrust it under his pillow, and went to sleep to dream it over again just as it had happened, with one important exception. In his dream, the figure, the voice, the words, were all Mamie’s, but the face was that of Constance Fearing, though it wore a look which he had never seen there. In the morning he laughed over the whole affair, being only too ready to believe that Mamie had really been laughing at him and that she had only been acting the little scene with the rose in the ............