"But you must--you, with your beauty, with your soul! Oh, Gladys, youwere made for love! You must love!"
"One must wait till it comes."
"But why can't you love me, Gladys? Is it my appearance, or what?"
She did unbend a little. She put forward a hand--such a gracious,stooping attitude it was--and she pressed back my head. Then shelooked into my upturned face with a very wistful smile.
"No it isn't that," she said at last. "You're not a conceited boy bynature, and so I can safely tell you it is not that. It's deeper."
"My character?"
She nodded severely.
"What can I do to mend it? Do sit down and talk it over. No, really,I won't if you'll only sit down!"
She looked at me with a wondering distrust which was much more to mymind than her whole-hearted confidence. How primitive and bestial itlooks when you put it down in black and white!--and perhaps after allit is only a feeling peculiar to myself. Anyhow, she sat down.
"Now tell me what's amiss with me?"
"I'm in love with somebody else," said she.
It was my turn to jump out of my chair.
"It's nobody in particular," she explained, laughing at the expressionof my face: "only an ideal. I've never met the kind of man I mean."
"Tell me about him. What does he look like?"
"Oh, he might look very much like you."
"How dear of you to say that! Well, what is it that he does that Idon't do? Just say the word,--teetotal, vegetarian, aeronaut,theosophist, superman. I'll have a try at it, Gladys, if you will onlygive me an idea what would please you."
She laughed at the elasticity of my character. "Well, in the firstplace, I don't think my ideal would speak like that," said she. "Hewould be a harder, sterner man, not so ready to adapt himself to asilly girl's whim. But, above a
ll, he must be a man who could do, whocould act, who could look Death in the face and have no fear of him, aman of great deeds and strange experiences. It is never a man that Ishould love, but always the glories he had won; for they would bereflected upon me. Think of Richard Burton! When I read his wife'slife of him I could so understand her love! And Lady Stanley! Did youever read the wonderful last chapter of that book about her husband?These are the sort of men that a woman could worship with all her soul,and yet be the greater, not the less, on account of her love, honoredby all the world as the inspirer of noble deeds."
She looked so beautiful in her enthusiasm that I nearly brought downthe whole level of the interview. I gripped myself hard, and went onwith the argument.
"We can't all be Stanleys and Burtons," said I; "besides, we don't getthe chance,--at least, I never had the chance. If I did, I should tryto take it."
"But chances are all around you. It is the mark of the kind of man Imean that he makes his own chances. You can't hold him back. I'venever met him, and yet I seem to know him so well. There are heroismsall round us waiting to be done. It's for men to do them, and forwomen to reserve their love as a reward for such men. Look at thatyoung Frenchman who went up last week in a balloon. It was blowing agale of wind; but because he was announced to go he insisted onstarting. The wind blew him fifteen hundred miles in twenty-fourhours, and he fell in the middle of Russia. That was the kind of man Imean. Think of the woman he loved, and how other women must haveenvied her! That's what I should like to be,--envied for my man."
"I'd have done it to please you."
"But you shouldn't do it merely to please me. You should do it becauseyou can't help yourself, because it's natural to you, because the manin you is crying out for heroic expression. Now, when you describedthe Wigan coal explosion last month, could you not have gone down andhelped those people, in spite of the choke-damp?"
"I did."
"You never said so."
"There was nothing worth bucking about."
"I didn't know." She looked at me with rather more interest. "Thatwas brave of you."
"I had to. If you want to write good copy, you must be where thethings are."
"What a prosaic motive! It seems to take all the romance out of it.But, still, whatever your motive, I am glad that you went down thatmine." She gave me her hand; but with such sweetness and dignity thatI could only stoop and kiss it. "I dare say I am merely a foolishwoman with a young girl's fancies. And yet it is so real with me, soentirely part of my very self, that I cannot help acting upon it. If Imarry, I do want to marry a famous man!"
"Why should you not?" I cried. "It is women like you who brace men up.Give me a chance, and see if I will take it! Besides, as you say, menought to MAKE their own chances, and not wait until they are given.Look at Clive--just a clerk, and he conquered India! By George! I'lldo something in the world yet!"