"I"m going to confess something," she finally said with a little laugh.
"I hate to keep house. I hate to sew, and I can"t marry a man who wants me to do the way other women do. I must be intended for something else than a housewife, because I never do a bit of cooking or sewing without groaning. I like to paint fences and paper walls; but I"m not in the least domestic."
Isabel was amused at the serious tone in which Rose spoke.
"There is one primal event which can change all that. I"ve seen it transform a score of women. It will make you domestic and will turn sewing into a delight."
"What do you mean?" asked Rose, though more than half guessing.
"I mean motherhood."
The girl shrank, and sat silent, as if a doom had been p.r.o.nounced upon her.
"That is what marriage must mean to you and to me," Isabel said, and her face had an exultant light in it. "I love my profession--I am ambitious in it, but I could bear to give it all up a hundred times over, rather than my hope of being a mother."
The girl was awed almost into whispering.
"Does it mean that--will it take away your power as a physician?"
"No, that"s the best of it these days. If a woman has brains and a good man for a husband, it broadens her powers. I feel that Dr. Sanborn and I will be better physicians by being father and mother. O, those are great words, Rose! Let me tell you they are broader than poet or painter, deeper than wife or husband. I"ve wanted to say these things to you, Rose. You"ve escaped reckless marriage someway, now let me warn you against an ambitious marriage--"
She broke off suddenly. "No, I"ll stop. You"ve taken care of yourself so far; it would be strange if you couldn"t now." She turned quickly and went to Rose. "I love you," she said. "We are spiritual sisters, I felt that the day you crushed me. I like women who do not cry. I want you to forgive me for lecturing you, and I want you to go on following the lead of your mysterious guide; I don"t know what it is or, rather, who he is--"
She stopped suddenly, and seating herself on the arm of Rose"s chair, smiled.
"I believe it is a man, somewhere. Come now, confess--who is he?"
Quick as light the form and face of William De Lisle came into Rose"s thought, and she said:
"He"s a circus rider."
Isabel unclasped Rose"s arm and faced her.
"A circus rider!"
Rose colored hotly and looked away.
"I--can"t tell you about it--you"d laugh and--well, I don"t care to explain."
Isabel looked at her with comical gravity.
"Do you know what you"ve done, "coolly" girl? You know the common opinion of woman"s curiosity? I don"t believe a woman is a bit more curious than a man, only a woman is curious about things he isn"t. I"m suffering agonies this minute. You know I"m an alienist. I"ve studied mad people so much I know just what sends them off. You"ve started me.
If you don"t explain at once--" She went to the door and called, "Etta!
Don"t disturb me, no matter who comes."
"Now tell me about it," she said, as she sat down beside Rose and studied her with avid eyes.
"Why, it"s nothing," Rose began. "I never spoke to him, and he never even saw me, and I never saw him but once--"
"And yet he influenced your whole life?"
Rose mused a moment:
"Yes, I can see it now--I never realized it before--he has helped me all my life."
She told of her first sight of him, of her long ride home, of her thoughts of him, reserving something, of course, and her voice grew husky with remembered emotion. She uttered more than she knew. She showed the keen little woman at her side the more imaginative side of her nature. It became evident to Isabel that the beautiful poise of the head and supple swing of the girl"s body was in part due to the suggestion of the man"s perfect grace. His idealized face had made the commonplace apparent--had led her, lifted her.
"Why, it"s all a poem!" she exclaimed at the end. "It"s magnificent; and you thought I"d laugh!" She looked reproachful. "I think it"s incredibly beautiful. What was his name? We may meet him some time--"
Rose drew back and grew hot with a blush.
"Oh, no--I don"t want to see him now. I"m afraid he wouldn"t seem the same to me now."
Isabel considered. "You"re right! He never really existed. He was a product of your own clean, sweet imagination, but let me tell you--" she made a swift feminine turn to the trivial, "You"ll marry a tall, lathy man, or a short, dumpy man. That"s the way things go. Really, I"ll need to keep Doctor and Mason out of the house."
CHAPTER XXIII
A STORM AND A HELMSMAN
In quiet wise her winter wore on. In a month or two the home feeling began to make itself felt, and the city grew less appalling, though hardly less oppressive. There were moments when it seemed the most splendid presence in the world--at sunset, when the river was crowded with shipping and the great buildings loomed up blue as wood-smoke, almost translucent; when the brick walls grew wine-colored; when the river was flooded with radiance from the western sun, and the great steamers lay like birds wearied and dreaming after a long journey.
Sometimes, too, at night, when she came out of the concert hall and saw the glittering twin tiaras of burning gold which the Great Northern towers held against the blue-black, starless sky, two hundred feet above the pavement; or when in the early evening she approached the mountainous Temple, luminous and sparkling with electric lights, lifting a lighted dome as airy as a bubble three hundred feet into the pale sapphire of the cloudless sky--the city grew lofty.
The gross, the confused in line, the prosy in color, disappeared at such moments, and the city, always vast, took on grace and charm and softened to magnificence; became epic, expressing in prophecy that which it must attain to; expressed the swift coming in of art and poetry in the lives of the western world-builders.
She grew with it all; it deepened her conception of life, but she could not write of it for the reason that it was too near and too multiple in its appeal upon her. She strove daily to arrange it in her mind, to put it into form, and this striving wore upon her severely. She lost some of her superb color and physical elasticity because of it, and became each week a little less distinctive exteriorly, which was a decided loss, Mason told Isabel.
"She isn"t losing anything very real," Isabel said. "She"s just as unaccountable as ever. She goes out much less than you imagine. I take her out, and send her, all I can to keep her from getting morbid. Why don"t you come oftener and help me?"
"Self-protection," said Mason.
"Are you afraid of a country girl?"
"O, no--afraid of myself."
"How much do you mean of that, Warren?"
"All of it."
She wrinkled her brow in disgust of his concealing candor.
"O, you are impossible in that mood!"
As the winter deepened Rose narrowed the circle of conquest. She no longer thought of conquering the world; it came to be the question of winning the approbation of one human soul. That is, she wished to win the approbation of the world in order that Warren Mason might smile and say "Well done!"