Part 21 (2/2)

'That wouldn't suit me. I like to go slowly and to linger over the things that please me, to drink in their real character. It is pleasant to move swiftly, but all this motor-car business seems to me to be only another dodge--running away from life.... I ought to do it if I were true to my temperament, but I love my job too much. I'm an intellectual, but I can't stand by and look on, and I can't run away.'

Clara had never met any one like him before. There was such acute misery in his face, and his words seemed only to be a cloud thrown up to disguise the retreat he was visibly making from her. She would not have that. She was sure of him. This att.i.tude of his was a challenge to her. The force with which he spoke had made Charles and even herself seem flimsy and fantastic, and she wanted to prove that she was or could be made as solid, as definite and precise as himself.

She knew what it was to be driven by her own will. Her sympathy was with him there. He was driven to the point of exhaustion.

'I've been trying to create the woman of the future,' he said.

'Ibsen's women are all nerves. What I want to get is the woman who can detach herself from her emotional experience and accept failure, as a man does, with a belief that in the long run the human mind is stronger than Nature. If instincts are baffled, they are not to be trusted.

Women have yet to learn that.... When they learn it, we can begin to get straight.'

It did not seem to matter whether she understood him or not. He had her sympathy, and he was glad to talk.

'That seems to be the heart of the problem. But it is a little disconcerting, when you have been trying to create a woman, to walk into a bookshop and find her.'

'How do you know?' she asked. 'I may be only acting. That is what women do. They find out by instinct the ideal in a man's mind and reproduce it.'

He shook his head.

'All ideals to all men? ... You have given the game away.'

'That might only be the cleverest trick of all.'

For a moment he was suspicious of her, but this coquetry was n.o.ble and designed to please and soothe him.

'I'm in for a bad time,' he said simply. 'Things have been too easy for me so far. I gave myself twenty years in which to produce what I want and what the world must have.... Things aren't so simple as all that.'

'Do drink your tea. I think you take everything too hardly. People don't know that they are indifferent. There are so many things to do, so many people to meet, they are so busy that they don't realise that they are standing still and just repeating themselves over and over again.'

'd.a.m.n the orchestra!' said Rodd. The first violin was playing a solo with muted strings. 'If people will stand this, they will stand anything. It is slow murder.'

'Do believe that they like it,' replied Clara.

'Slow murder?'

'No. The--music.'

'Same thing.' He laughed. 'Oh, well. You have robbed me of my occupation. When shall we meet again?'

'To-morrow?'

'To-morrow. You shall see how I live-- If you can spare the time I would like to take you to a concert. I always test my friends with music.'

'Even the New Woman?'

His eyes twinkled and a smile played about his sensitive lips.

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