Part 49 (1/2)
Nina began it. ”Owen,” she said, ”how did George Tanqueray strike you?”
He paused before he spoke. ”I think,” he said, ”I never in my life saw anybody more on the look-out. It's terrible, that prowling genius, always ready to spring.”
”I know,” she said, ”he sees everything.”
”No, Nina, he doesn't. He's a man whose genius has made away with one half of his capacity for seeing. That's his curse! If your eyes are incessantly looking out they lose the power of looking in.”
”And yet, he's the only really great psychologist we've got. He and Jane Holland.”
”Yes, as they go, your psychologists. Tanqueray sees so much inside other people that he can't see inside himself. What's worse, I shouldn't think he'd see far inside the people who really touch him. It comes of perpetually looking away.”
”You don't know him. How can you tell?”
”Because I never look away.”
”Can you see what's going on inside _me_?”
”Sometimes. I don't always look.”
”Can you help looking?”
”Of course you can.”
”You _may_ look. I don't think I mind your looking. Why,” she asked abruptly, ”don't I mind?”
Her voice had an accent that betrayed her.
”Because there's nothing inside you that you're ashamed of.”
She reddened with shame; shame of the fierce, base instinct that had made her keep him to herself. She knew that nothing escaped him. He had the keen, comprehending eyes of the physician who knows the sad secrets of the body; and he had other eyes that saw inward, that held and drew to confession the terrified, reluctant soul. She had an insane longing to throw herself at his feet in confession.
”Yes,” she said, ”but there are _things_----And yet----”
He stopped her. ”Nothing, Nina, if you really knew yourself.”
”Owen--it's not that. It's not because I don't know myself. It's because I know you. I know that, whatever there might be in me, whatever I did, however low I sank--if I could sink--your charity would be there to hold me up. And it wouldn't be your charity, either. I couldn't stand your charity. It wouldn't even be understanding. You don't understand me. It would be some knowledge of me that I couldn't have myself, that n.o.body but you could have. As if whatever you saw you'd say, 'That isn't really Nina.'”
”I should say, 'That's really Nina, so it's all right.'”
She paused, brooding on the possibilities he saw, that he was bound to see, if he saw anything. Did he, she wondered, really see what was in her, her hidden shames and insanities, the course of the wild blood that he knew must flow from all the Lemprieres to her? She lived, to be sure, the life of an ascetic and took it out in dreams. Yet he must see how her savage, solitary pa.s.sion clung to him, and would not let go. Did he see, and yet did he not condemn her?
”Owen,” she said suddenly, ”do you mind seeing?”
”Sometimes I hate it. These aren't the things, you know, I want to see.”
She lowered her eyes. Her nervous hand moved slowly to and fro along the window-sill, measuring her next words.
”What--do you want--to see?”
He rose to his feet and looked at her. At her, not through her, and she wondered, had he seen enough? It was as if he withdrew himself before some thought that stirred in her, menacing to peace.