The Fourth Generation. Walter Besant

was told last night,” she said, “at the club—fancy, at the club!—that I have been compromising myself by dining night after night with you and letting you walk home with me. That is their idea of woman’s liberty. She is not to form friendships. Don’t abuse our members. Pray remember, Leonard, that I do not in the least mind what they say.”

      At the first glance at her face, one could understand that this girl was not in the least alarmed as to what women might say of her. It was a proud face. There are many kinds of pride—she might have been proud of her family, had she chosen that form; or of her intellect and attainments; or of her beauty—which was remarkable. She was not proud in any such way; she had that intense self-respect which is pride of the highest kind. “She was a woman, therefore, to be wooed,” but the wooer must meet and equal that intense self-respect. This pride made her seem cold. Everybody thought her intensely cold. Leonard was perhaps the only man who knew by a thousand little indications that she was very far from cold. The pose of her head, the lines of the mouth, the intellectual look in her eyes, the clear-cut regularity of her features, proclaimed her pride and seemed to proclaim her coldness.

      “I always remember what you say, Constance. And now tell me what you came to say.”

      She rose from the chair and remained standing. She began by looking at the things over the mantel as if she was greatly interested in tobacco and cigarettes. Then she turned upon him abruptly, joining her hands. “What I came to say was this.”

      He read the answer in her face, which was frank, hard, and without the least sign of embarrassment, confusion, or weakening. It is not with such a look that a girl gives herself to her lover. However, he pretended not to understand.

      “What is it?”

      “Well, it is just this. I have thought about it for a whole week, and it won’t do. That is my answer. It won’t do for either of us. I like you very much. I like our present relations. We dine together at the club. I come in here without fuss. You come to my place without fuss. We talk and walk and go about together. I do not suppose that I shall ever receive this kind of invitation from any man whom I regard so much. And yet——”

      “ ‘Yet!’ Why this obstructive participle? I bring you”—but he spoke with coldness due to the discouragement in the maiden’s face—“the fullest worship of yourself.”

      She shook her head and put up her hand. “Oh no!—no!” she said. “Worship? I want no worship. What do you mean by worship?”

      “I mean the greatest respect—the greatest reverence—the greatest admiration——”

      “For what?”

      “For Constance Ambry.”

      “Thank you, my friend. Some of the respect I accept with gratitude, not all of it. Still, I dare say, at this moment, you mean it all. But consider a little. Do you worship my intellect? Confess, now. You know that it is distinctly inferior to your own. I know it, I say. If you came to me pretending to worship an intellect inferior to your own, I should lose my respect for you, or I should lose my faith in your truthfulness. It cannot be my intellect. Is it, then, worship of my genius? But I have no genius. And that you know very well. Is it worship of my attainments? They are far below most of the scholars of your University and the Fellows of your college. You cannot possibly pretend to worship my attainments——”

      “Let me worship Constance Ambry herself.”

      She laughed lightly.

      “It would be very foolish of you to do so. For you could not do so without lowering your standards and your character, by pretending what is not the case. For I am no higher than yourself in any of the virtues possible to us both: not a bit higher: I believe that my standards of everything—truth, honour, courage—patience—all—all—everything are like my intellect, distinctly lower than your own. Such is the respect which I entertain for you. Therefore, my friend, do not, pray, think of offering me worship.”

      “You wrong yourself, Constance. Your nature is far higher than mine.”

      She laughed again. “If I were to marry you, in a week you would find out your mistake—and then you might fall into the opposite mistake.”

      “How am I to make you understand?”

      “I do understand. There is something that attracts you. Men are so, I suppose. It is face, or voice, or figure, or manner. No one can tell why a man is attracted.”

      “Constance, is it possible that you are not conscious of your beauty?”

      She looked him full in the face, and replied slowly: “I wish I understood things. I see very well that men are more easily moved to love than women. They make the most appalling mistakes: I know of some—mistakes not to be remedied. Do not let us two make a mistake.”

      “It would be no mistake, believe me.”

      “I don’t know. There is the question of beauty. Women are not fascinated by the beauty of other women. A man is attracted by a face, and straightway attributes to the soul behind that face all the virtues possible. Women can behold a pretty face without believing that it is the stamp of purity and holiness. Besides—a face! Why, in a dozen years what will it be like? And in thirty years—— Oh! Terrible to think of!”

      “Never, Constance. You could never be otherwise than wholly beautiful.”

      She shook her head again, unconvinced. “I do not wish to be worshipped,” she repeated. “Other women may like it. To me it would be a humiliation. I don’t want worship; I want rivalry. Let me work among those who truly work, and win my own place. As for my own face, and those so-called feminine attractions, I confess that I am not interested in them. Not in the least.”

      “If you will only let me go on admiring——”

      “Oh!” she shook that admirable head impatiently, “as much as you please.”

      Leonard sighed. Persuasion, he knew well, was of no use with this young lady; she knew her own mind.

      “I will ask no more,” he said. “Your heart is capable of every emotion—except one. You are deficient in the one passion which, if you had it, would make you divine.”

      She laughed scornfully. “Make me divine?” she repeated. “Oh, you talk like a man—not a scholar and a philosopher, but a mere man.” She left the personal side of the question, and began to treat it generally. “The whole of poetry is disfigured with the sham divinity, the counterfeit divinity, of the woman. I do not want that kind of ascribed divinity. Therefore I do not regret the absence of this emotion which you so much desire; I can very well do without it.” She spoke with conviction, and she looked the part she played—cold, loveless, without a touch of Venus. “I was lecturing my class the other day on this very subject. I took Herrick for my text; but, indeed, there are plenty of poets who would do as well. I spoke of this sham divinity. I said that we wanted in poetry, as in human life, a certain sanity, which can only exist in a condition of controlled emotion.”

      It was perhaps a proof that neither lover nor maiden really felt the power of the passion called Love that they could thus, at what to some persons would be a supreme moment, drop into a cold philosophic treatment of the subject.

      “Perhaps love does not recognise sanity.”

      “Then love had better be locked up. I pointed out in my lecture that these conceits and extravagancies may be very pretty set to the music of rhythm and rhyme and phrase, but that in the conduct of life they can have no place except in the brains of men who have now ceased to exist.”

      “Ceased to exist?”

      “I mean that the ages of ungoverned passion have died out. To dwell perpetually on a mere episode in life, to magnify its importance, to deify the poet’s mistress—that, I told my class, is to present a false view of life and to divert poetry from its proper function.”

      “How did your