“You don’t see, Constance, that I am here.”
She started, and pulled herself up in a moment. “Oh, are you there, papa? No, I didn’t see you. I didn’t think of any one being here. Well, they are gone. Everybody came to see Frances off, as you divined. She bore up very well; but, of course, it was a little sad for her, leaving everything she knows.”
“You were crying a minute ago, Constance.”
“Was I? Oh, well, that was nothing. Girls cry, and it doesn’t mean much. You know women well enough to know that.”
“Yes, I know women--enough to say the ordinary things about them,” said Waring; “but perhaps I don’t know you, which is of far more consequence just now.”
“There is not much in me to know,” said the girl in a light voice. “I am just like other girls. I am apt to cry when I see people crying. Frances sobbed--like a little foolish thing; for why should she cry? She is going to see the world. Did you ever feel, when you came here first, a sort of horror seize upon you, as if--as if--as if you were lost in a savage wilderness, and would never see a human face again?”
“No, to be sure,” cried Constance. “What ridiculous nonsense I am talking! A savage wilderness! with all these houses about, and the hotels on the beach. I mean--didn’t you feel as if you would like to run violently down a steep place into the sea?” Then she stopped, and laughed. “It was the swine that did that.”
“It has never occurred to me to take that means of settling matters; and yet I understand you,” he said gravely. “You have made a mistake. You thought you were philosopher enough to give up the world; and it turns out that you are not. But you need not cry, for it is not too late. You can change your mind.”
“I--change my mind! Not for the world, papa! Do you think I would give them the triumph of supposing that I could not do without them, that I was obliged to go back? Not for the world.”
“I understand the sentiment,” he said. “Still, between these two conditions of mind, it is rather unfortunate for you, my dear. I do not see any middle course.”
“Oh yes, there is a middle course. I can make myself very comfortable here; and that is what I mean to do. Papa, if you had not found it out, I should not have told you. I hope you are not offended?”