She stopped sewing--the rapid movements of her hand had been almost automatic--and looked at him, her work falling to her knee. "Come here," she said, holding out her hand to him, "come here. Have I seemed harsh to you?" Her sudden smile dwelt on him with a divine sweetness. "I am harsh--but not to you."
Damier, with an eagerness almost pathetically boyish, had sprung to her side, and she took his hand, smiling up at him. "Not to you. You have enlarged my trust--need I say how much? Don't ask me to alloy it with dubious admixtures."
His love for her was yet so founded on a sort of sacred fear that at this moment of delicious happiness he did not dare to stoop and confess all with a lover's kiss upon her hair, did not even dare to look a confession of more than a responsive affection.
She pressed his hand, still smiling at him, and then, resuming her sewing, "Sit near me," she said, "so I can see that you are not fancying that I am harsh with you!"
At such moments he could see in her eyes, that caressed one, made sweetest amends to one, touches of what must once have been enchanting roguishness.
"But I am still going to risk your harshness," he said; "I am still going to ask you to let your trust in me include my friend. She would stand tests. Won't you take my word for it?"
"I believe that I would take your word for anything."
"And," said Damier, looking his thanks, "all you say is true. I don't want to justify man's ways to man; and yet ordinary human nature, with its almost inevitable self-regarding instinct, its climb toward happiness, its ugly struggle for successful attainment of it, is more forgetful than cruel toward unhappiness. One must be patient with it; one must remember that only the exceptional natures can rise above that primitive instinct. To take the other road is to embrace the sacrifice of all the second-rate joys--the only real joys to the average human being. One must either yield to the instinct or fight it, and most people are too lazy, too skeptical of other than apparent good, to do that. And then you must remember--I must, for how often I have struggled with these thoughts!--that misfortune is a mask, a disguise. One can't be recognized and known when one wears it; one can't show one's self; if one could there would perhaps be responses. People are base--most of them are base, perhaps; but sometimes they are only blind or stupid."