She was no nearer sleep after looking matters calmly in the face, that way, for a full hour. Similar trials to dramatize a probable future all ended on the same lines, and each time Gwen was indignant with herself for her own folly. What was this man to her, whom she had seen twice? Little enough!--she pledged herself to it in the Court of Conscience! What was she to him, who had spoken with her twice certainly; but _seen_ her--oh, how little! Why, _she_ had seen _him_ more, of the two, if one came to close quarters with Time. See how long he was stooping over that unfortunate dog-chain!
Sitting up in bed in the dim July dawn, wild-eyed in an unshepherded flock of golden locks, this young lady was certainly surpassingly beautiful. She was revolving in her poor, aching head a contingency she had not fully allowed for. Suppose--merely to look other things in the face, you see!--suppose there were _no_ dummy! What chance would the poor fellow have then of winning the love of any woman, with those blind eyes in his head? Gwen got up restlessly and went to the casement, meeting a stream of level sunlight that the swallows outside in the ivy were making the subject of comment, and stood looking out over the leagues of the ancient domain of her forefathers. "Gwen o' the Towers"--that was her name. It seemed to join chorus with her own answer to the last question, to her satisfaction.
To offer the consolation of her love, to give all she had to give, to this man as compensation for the great curse that had fallen on him through the fault of her belongings, seemed to her in her excited state easy and nowise strange--mere difficulty of the negotiation apart. She elected to shut her eyes to a fact we and the story can guess--we are so shrewd, you see!--and to make a parade in her own eyes of a self-renunciation approaching that of Marcus Curtius. If only the gulf would open to receive her she would fling herself in. She ignored the dissimilarities of detail in the two cases, especially the conceivable promised land at the bottom of _her_ gulf. The Roman Eques had nothing but death and darkness to look forward to.
The difficulties of the scheme shot across her fevered conception of it. How if, though he was not affianced to the dummy, or any other lay figure she might provide, his was a widowed heart left barren by the hand of Death? How if some other disappointment had marred his life?--some passion for a woman who had rashly accepted somebody else before meeting him? This happens we know; so did Gwen, and was sorry. How if some minx--Lutwyche's expression--had bewitched him and slighted him? He might nurse a false ideal of her till Doomsday. Men did sometimes, _coeteris paribus_. But how could she--how _could_ she?... Anyhow, Gwen might have seen her way through that difficulty with a fair chance. But--to be invisible!