"But surely, Popper, you don"t mean to insinuate--Mr White and I are going to Holland as friends."
"Friends!"
He looked at her more curiously than ever.
"One can have a man friend as well as a girl friend," she continued.
"And I don"t see why he shouldn"t be just as good a friend."
"The danger is that he become too good."
"You misunderstand me entirely, Popper; we are friends, and nothing but friends."
"You are entirely off your head, my child."
"Ah! you"re a Frenchman, you can"t understand these things. We are different."
"I imagine that you are human beings, even though England and America respectively had the intense good fortune of seeing your birth."
"We"re human beings--and more than that, we"re nineteenth century human beings. Love is not everything. It is a part of one--perhaps the lower part--an accessory to man"s life, needful for the continuation of the species."
"You use such difficult words, my dear."
"There is something higher and n.o.bler and purer than love--there is friendship. Ferdinand White is my friend. I have the amplest confidence in him. I am certain that no unclean thought has ever entered his head."
She spoke quite heatedly, and as she flushed up, the old painter thought her astonishingly handsome. Then she added as an afterthought,--
"We despise pa.s.sion. Pa.s.sion is ugly; it is grotesque."
The painter stroked his imperial and faintly smiled.
"My child, you must permit me to tell you that you are foolish. Pa.s.sion is the most lovely thing in the world; without it we should not paint beautiful pictures. It is pa.s.sion that makes a woman of a society lady; it is pa.s.sion that makes a man even of--an art critic."
"We do not want it," she said. "We worship Venus Urania. We are all spirit and soul."
"You have been reading Plato; soon you will read Zola."
He smiled again, and lit another cigarette.
"Do you disapprove of my going?" she asked after a little silence.
He paused and looked at her. Then he shrugged his shoulders.
"On the contrary, I approve. It is foolish, but that is no reason why you should not do it. After all, folly is the great attribute of man. No judge is as grave as an owl; no soldier fighting for his country flies as rapidly as the hare. You may be strong, but you are not so strong as a horse; you may be gluttonous, but you cannot eat like a boa-constrictor. But there is no beast that can be as foolish as man.
And since one should always do what one can do best--be foolish. Strive for folly above all things. Let the height of your ambition be the pointed cap with the golden bells. So, _bon voyage!_ I will come and see you off to-morrow."
The painter arrived at the station with a box of sweets, which he handed to Valentia with a smile. He shook Ferdinand"s hand warmly and muttered under his breath,--
"Silly fool! he"s thinking of friendship, too!"
Then, as the train steamed out, he waved his hand and cried,--
"Be foolish! Be foolish!"
He walked slowly out of the station, and sat down at a _cafe_. He lit a cigarette, and, sipping his absinthe, said,--
"Imbeciles!"
III
They arrived at Amsterdam in the evening, and, after dinner, gathered together their belongings and crossed the Ij as the moon shone over the waters; then they got into the little steam tram and started for Monnickendam. They stood side by side on the platform of the carriage and watched the broad meadows bathed in moonlight, the formless shapes of the cattle lying on the gra.s.s, and the black outlines of the mills; they pa.s.sed by a long, sleeping ca.n.a.l, and they stopped at little, silent villages. At last they entered the dead town, and the tram put them down at the hotel door.
Next morning, when she was half dressed, Valentia threw open the window of her room, and looked out into the garden. Ferdinand was walking about, dressed as befitted the place and season--in flannels--with a huge white hat on his head. She could not help thinking him very handsome--and she took off the blue skirt she had intended to work in, and put on a dress of muslin all bespattered with coloured flowers, and she took in her hand a flat straw hat with red ribbons.
"You look like a Dresden shepherdess," he said, as they met.
They had breakfast in the garden beneath the trees; and as she poured out his tea, she laughed, and with the American accent which he was beginning to think made English so harmonious, said,--
"I reckon this about takes the shine out of Paris."
They had agreed to start work at once, losing no time, for they wanted to have a lot to show on their return to France, that their scheme might justify itself. Ferdinand wished to accompany Valentia on her search for the picturesque, but she would not let him; so, after breakfast, he sat himself down in the summer-house, and spread out all round him his nice white paper, lit his pipe, cut his quills, and proceeded to the evolution of a masterpiece. Valentia tied the red strings of her sun-bonnet under her chin, selected a sketchbook, and sallied forth.
At luncheon they met, and Valentia told of a little bit of ca.n.a.l, with an old windmill on one side of it, which she had decided to paint, while Ferdinand announced that he had settled on the names of his _dramatis personae_. In the afternoon they returned to their work, and at night, tired with the previous day"s travelling, went to bed soon after dinner.
So pa.s.sed the second day; and the third day, and the fourth; till the end of the week came, and they had worked diligently. They were both of them rather surprised at the ease with which they became accustomed to their life.
"How absurd all this fuss is," said Valentia, "that people make about the differences of the s.e.xes! I am sure it is only habit."
"We have ourselves to prove that there is nothing in it," he replied.
"You know, it is an interesting experiment that we are making."
She had not looked at it in that light before.
"Perhaps it is. We may be the fore-runners of a new era."
"The Edisons of a new communion!"
"I shall write and tell Monsieur Rollo all about it."
In the course of the letter, she said,--
"_s.e.x is a morbid instinct. Out here, in the calmness of the ca.n.a.l and the broad meadows, it never enters one"s head. I do not think of Ferdinand as a man--_"
She looked up at him as she wrote the words. He was reading a book and she saw him in profile, with the head bent down. Through the leaves the sun lit up his face with a soft light that was almost green, and it occurred to her that it would be interesting to paint him.
"_I do not think of Ferdinand as a man; to me he is a companion. He has a wider experience than a woman, and he talks of different things. Otherwise I see no difference. On his part, the idea of my s.e.x never occurs to him, and far from being annoyed as an ordinary woman might be, I am proud of it. It shows me that, when I chose a companion, I chose well. To him I am not a woman; I am a man._"
And she finished with a repet.i.tion of Ferdinand"s remark,--