Part 29 (1/2)

”Very.”

”And yet----?”

”Well?”

He seemed to hesitate at a dangerous topic. ”The other,” he said.

Melville's silence bade him go on.

He plunged from his prepared att.i.tude. ”What is it? Why should--this being--come into my life, as she has done, if it _is_ so simple? What is there about her, or me, that has pulled me so astray? She has, you know.

Here we are at sixes and sevens! It's not the situation, it's the mental conflict. Why am I pulled about? She has got into my imagination. How? I haven't the remotest idea.”

”She's beautiful,” meditated Melville.

”She's beautiful certainly. But so is Miss Glendower.”

”She's very beautiful. I'm not blind, Chatteris. She's beautiful in a different way.”

”Yes, but that's only the name for the effect. _Why_ is she very beautiful?”

Melville shrugged his shoulders.

”She's not beautiful to every one.”

”You mean?”

”Bunting keeps calm.”

”Oh--_he_----!”

”And other people don't seem to see it--as I do.”

”Some people seem to see no beauty at all, as we do. With emotion, that is.”

”Why do we?”

”We see--finer.”

”Do we? Is it finer? Why should it be finer to see beauty where it is fatal to us to see it? Why? Unless we are to believe there is no reason in things, why should this--impossibility, be beautiful to any one anyhow? Put it as a matter of reason, Melville. Why should _her_ smile be so sweet to me, why should _her_ voice move me! Why her's and not Adeline's? Adeline has straight eyes and clear eyes and fine eyes, and all the difference there can be, what is it? An infinitesimal curving of the lid, an infinitesimal difference in the lashes--and it shatters everything--in this way. Who could measure the difference, who could tell the quality that makes me _swim_ in the sound of her voice.... The difference? After all, it's a visible thing, it's a material thing! It's in my eyes. By Jove!” he laughed abruptly. ”Imagine old Helmholtz trying to gauge it with a battery of resonators, or Spencer in the light of Evolution and the Environment explaining it away!”

”These things are beyond measurement,” said Melville.

”Not if you measure them by their effect,” said Chatteris. ”And anyhow, why do they take us? That is the question I can't get away from just now.”

My cousin meditated, no doubt with his hands deep in his trousers'

pockets. ”It is illusion,” he said. ”It is a sort of glamour. After all, look at it squarely. What is she? What can she give you? She promises you vague somethings.... She is a snare, she is deception. She is the beautiful mask of death.”

”Yes,” said Chatteris. ”I know.”

And then again, ”I know.