第100章

When Rodney owned to himself the folly of this prolonged silence, and the meanness of such devices, and looked up ready to seek some excuse for a good laugh, or opening for a confession, he was disconcerted by what he saw. Katharine seemed equally oblivious of what was bad or of what was good in him. Her expression suggested concentration upon something entirely remote from her surroundings. The carelessness of her attitude seemed to him rather masculine than feminine. His impulse to break up the constraint was chilled, and once more the exasperating sense of his own impotency returned to him. He could not help contrasting Katharine with his vision of the engaging, whimsical Cassandra; Katharine undemonstrative, inconsiderate, silent, and yet so notable that he could never do without her good opinion.

She veered round upon him a moment later, as if, when her train of thought was ended, she became aware of his presence.

"Have you finished your letter?" she asked. He thought he heard faint amusement in her tone, but not a trace of jealousy.

"No, I'm not going to write any more to-night," he said. "I'm not in the mood for it for some reason. I can't say what I want to say.""Cassandra won't know if it's well written or badly written,"Katharine remarked.

"I'm not so sure about that. I should say she has a good deal of literary feeling.""Perhaps," said Katharine indifferently. "You've been neglecting my education lately, by the way. I wish you'd read something. Let me choose a book." So speaking, she went across to his bookshelves and began looking in a desultory way among his books. Anything, she thought, was better than bickering or the strange silence which drove home to her the distance between them. As she pulled one book forward and then another she thought ironically of her own certainty not an hour ago; how it had vanished in a moment, how she was merely marking time as best she could, not knowing in the least where they stood, what they felt, or whether William loved her or not. More and more the condition of Mary's mind seemed to her wonderful and enviable--if, indeed, it could be quite as she figured it--if, indeed, simplicity existed for any one of the daughters of women.

"Swift," she said, at last, taking out a volume at haphazard to settle this question at least. "Let us have some Swift."Rodney took the book, held it in front of him, inserted one finger between the pages, but said nothing. His face wore a queer expression of deliberation, as if he were weighing one thing with another, and would not say anything until his mind were made up.

Katharine, taking her chair beside him, noted his silence and looked at him with sudden apprehension. What she hoped or feared, she could not have said; a most irrational and indefensible desire for some assurance of his affection was, perhaps, uppermost in her mind.

Peevishness, complaints, exacting cross-examination she was used to, but this attitude of composed quiet, which seemed to come from the consciousness of power within, puzzled her. She did not know what was going to happen next.

At last William spoke.

"I think it's a little odd, don't you?" he said, in a voice of detached reflection. "Most people, I mean, would be seriously upset if their marriage was put off for six months or so. But we aren't; now how do you account for that?"She looked at him and observed his judicial attitude as of one holding far aloof from emotion.

"I attribute it," he went on, without waiting for her to answer, "to the fact that neither of us is in the least romantic about the other.

That may be partly, no doubt, because we've known each other so long;but I'm inclined to think there's more in it than that. There's something temperamental. I think you're a trifle cold, and I suspect I'm a trifle self-absorbed. If that were so it goes a long way to explaining our odd lack of illusion about each other. I'm not saying that the most satisfactory marriages aren't founded upon this sort of understanding. But certainly it struck me as odd this morning, when Wilson told me, how little upset I felt. By the way, you're sure we haven't committed ourselves to that house?""I've kept the letters, and I'll go through them to-morrow; but I'm certain we're on the safe side.""Thanks. As to the psychological problem," he continued, as if the question interested him in a detached way, "there's no doubt, I think, that either of us is capable of feeling what, for reasons of simplicity, I call romance for a third person--at least, I've little doubt in my own case."It was, perhaps, the first time in all her knowledge of him that Katharine had known William enter thus deliberately and without sign of emotion upon a statement of his own feelings. He was wont to discourage such intimate discussions by a little laugh or turn of the conversation, as much as to say that men, or men of the world, find such topics a little silly, or in doubtful taste. His obvious wish to explain something puzzled her, interested her, and neutralized the wound to her vanity. For some reason, too, she felt more at ease with him than usual; or her ease was more the ease of equality--she could not stop to think of that at the moment though. His remarks interested her too much for the light that they threw upon certain problems of her own.

"What is this romance?" she mused.

"Ah, that's the question. I've never come across a definition that satisfied me, though there are some very good ones"--he glanced in the direction of his books.

"It's not altogether knowing the other person, perhaps--it's ignorance," she hazarded.

"Some authorities say it's a question of distance--romance in literature, that is--""Possibly, in the case of art. But in the case of people it may be--"she hesitated.

"Have you no personal experience of it?" he asked, letting his eyes rest upon her swiftly for a moment.