She made this remark with embarrassment,and a nervous movement of the fingers.Seeing that the loss occurred whilst Stephen Smith was attempting to kiss her for the first time on the cliff,her confusion was hardly to be wondered at.The question had been awkward,and received no direct answer.
Knight seemed not to notice her manner.
Oh,nobody ever loses both--I see.And certainly the fact that it was a case of loss takes away all odour of vanity from your choice.
As I never know whether you are in earnest,I dont now,she said,looking up inquiringly at the hairy face of the oracle.And coming gallantly to her own rescue,If I really seem vain,it is that I am only vain in my ways--not in my heart.The worst women are those vain in their hearts,and not in their ways.
An adroit distinction.Well,they are certainly the more objectionable of the two,said Knight.
Is vanity a mortal or a venial sin?You know what life is:tell me.
I am very far from knowing what life is.A just conception of life is too large a thing to grasp during the short interval of passing through it.
Will the fact of a woman being fond of jewellery be likely to make her life,in its higher sense,a failure?
Nobodys life is altogether a failure.
Well,you know what I mean,even though my words are badly selected and commonplace,she said impatiently.Because I utter commonplace words,you must not suppose I think only commonplace thoughts.My poor stock of words are like a limited number of rough moulds I have to cast all my materials in,good and bad;and the novelty or delicacy of the substance is often lost in the coarse triteness of the form.
Very well;Ill believe that ingenious representation.As to the subject in hand--lives which are failures--you need not trouble yourself.Anybodys life may be just as romantic and strange and interesting if he or she fails as if he or she succeed.All the difference is,that the last chapter is wanting in the story.If a man of power tries to do a great deed,and just falls short of it by an accident not his fault,up to that time his history had as much in it as that of a great man who has done his great deed.
It is whimsical of the world to hold that particulars of how a lad went to school and so on should be as an interesting romance or as nothing to them,precisely in proportion to his after renown.
They were walking between the sunset and the moonrise.With the dropping of the sun a nearly full moon had begun to raise itself.
Their shadows,as cast by the western glare,showed signs of becoming obliterated in the interest of a rival pair in the opposite direction which the moon was bringing to distinctness.
I consider my life to some extent a failure,said Knight again after a pause,during which he had noticed the antagonistic shadows.
You!How?
I dont precisely know.But in some way I have missed the mark.
Really?To have done it is not much to be sad about,but to feel that you have done it must be a cause of sorrow.Am I right?
Partly,though not quite.For a sensation of being profoundly experienced serves as a sort of consolation to people who are conscious of having taken wrong turnings.Contradictory as it seems,there is nothing truer than that people who have always gone right dont know half as much about the nature and ways of going right as those do who have gone wrong.However,it is not desirable for me to chill your summer-time by going into this.
You have not told me even now if I am really vain.
If I say Yes,I shall offend you;if I say No,youll think I dont mean it,he replied,looking curiously into her face.
Ah,well,she replied,with a little breath of distress,"That which is exceeding deep,who will find it out?"I suppose I must take you as I do the Bible--find out and understand all I can;and on the strength of that,swallow the rest in a lump,by simple faith.Think me vain,if you will.Worldly greatness requires so much littleness to grow up in,that an infirmity more or less is not a matter for regret.
As regards women,I cant say,answered Knight carelessly;but it is without doubt a misfortune for a man who has a living to get,to be born of a truly noble nature.A high soul will bring a man to the workhouse;so you may be right in sticking up for vanity.
No,no,I dont do that,she said regretfully.
Mr.Knight,when you are gone,will you send me something you have written?I think I should like to see whether you write as you have lately spoken,or in your better mood.Which is your true self--the cynic you have been this evening,or the nice philosopher you were up to to-night?
Ah,which?You know as well as I.
Their conversation detained them on the lawn and in the portico till the stars blinked out.Elfride flung back her head,and said idly--
Theres a bright star exactly over me.
Each bright star is overhead somewhere.
Is it?Oh yes,of course.Where is that one?and she pointed with her finger.
That is poised like a white hawk over one of the Cape Verde Islands.
And that?
Looking down upon the source of the Nile.
And that lonely quiet-looking one?
He watches the North Pole,and has no less than the whole equator for his horizon.And that idle one low down upon the ground,that we have almost rolled away from,is in India--over the head of a young friend of mine,who very possibly looks at the star in our zenith,as it hangs low upon his horizon,and thinks of it as marking where his true love dwells.
Elfride glanced at Knight with misgiving.Did he mean her?She could not see his features;but his attitude seemed to show unconsciousness.
The star is over MY head,she said with hesitation.
Or anybody elses in England.
Oh yes,I see:she breathed her relief.
His parents,I believe,are natives of this county.I dont know them,though I have been in correspondence with him for many years till lately.Fortunately or unfortunately for him he fell in love,and then went to Bombay.Since that time I have heard very little of him.
Knight went no further in his volunteered statement,and though Elfride at one moment was inclined to profit by the lessons in honesty he had just been giving her,the flesh was weak,and the intention dispersed into silence.There seemed a reproach in Knights blind words,and yet she was not able to clearly define any disloyalty that she had been guilty of.
