have misunderstood me!’ exclaimed Greif in distress. ‘I did not mean to say—’
‘You asked me if I were sure that I really loved you,’ said Hilda very gravely. ‘You must be mad, but those were your words.’
‘Hear me, sweetheart! I only asked because—you see, you are so different from other women! How can I explain!’
‘So you have had experience of others!’ She spoke coldly and her voice had an incisive ring in it that wounded him as a knife. He was too inexperienced to know what to do, and he instinctively assumed that look of injured superiority which it is the peculiar privilege of women to wear in such cases, and which, in a man, exasperates them beyond measure.
‘My dear,’ said Greif, ‘you have quite misunderstood me. I will explain the situation.’
‘It is necessary,’ answered Hilda, looking at the trees.
‘In the first place, you must remember what we were saying, or rather what you were saying a little while ago. You wanted an explanation of the nature of love. Now that made me think that you had never felt what I feel—’
‘I have not had your experience,’ observed Hilda.
‘But I have not had any experience either!’ exclaimed Greif, suddenly breaking down in his dissertation.
‘Then how do you know that I am so different from other women?’ was the inexorable retort.
‘I have seen other women, and talked with them—’
‘About love?’
‘No—about the weather,’ answered Greif, annoyed at her persistence.
‘And were their views about the weather so very different from mine?’ inquired the young girl, pushing him to the end of the situation.
‘Perhaps.’
‘You do not seem sure. I wish you would explain yourself, as you promised to do!’
‘Then you must not interrupt me at every word.’
‘Was I interrupting? I thought my questions might help you. Go on.’
‘I only mean to say that I never heard of a woman who wanted an explanation of her feelings when she was in love. And then I wondered whether your love was like mine, and as I am very sure, I supposed that if you felt differently you could not be so sure as I. That is all. Why are you so angry?’
‘You know very well why I am angry. That is only an excuse.’
‘If you are going to argue in that way—’ Greif shrugged his shoulders and said nothing more. Hilda seemed to be collecting her thoughts.
‘You evidently doubt me,’ she said at last, speaking quietly. ‘It is the first time. You have tried to defend your question, and you have not succeeded. All that you can tell me is that I am different from other women with whom you have talked. I know that as well as you do, though I have never seen them. It is quite possible that the difference may come from my education, or want of education. In that case, if you are going to be ashamed of me, when I am your wife, because I know less than the girls you have seen in towns and such places—why then, go away and marry one of them. She will feel as you expect her to feel, and you will be satisfied.’
‘Hilda!’
‘I mean what I say. But there may be something else. The difference may be there because I have not learned the same outward manners as the city people, because I do not laugh when they would laugh, cry when they would cry, act as they would act. I do not know half the things they like, or do, or say, but from what I have read I fancy that they are not at all simple, nor straightforward in their likings and dislikes, nor in their speech either. I do not even know whether I look like them, nor whether if I went to their places they would not take me for some strange wild animal. I make my own clothes. I have heard that they spend for one bit of dress as much as my mother and I spend in a whole year upon everything. I suppose they do, for your mother must wear what people wear in towns, and her things must cost a great deal. I think I should feel uncomfortable in them, but if we are married I will wear what you please—’
‘How can you say such things—’
‘I am only going over the points in which I am different from other women. That is one of them. Then I believe they learn all sorts of tricks—they can play on the piano—I have never seen one, for it is the only thing you have not got at Greifenstein—they draw and paint, they talk in more than one language, whereas I only know what little French my mother could teach me, they sing from written music—for that matter, I can sing without, which I suppose ought to be harder. But they can do all those little things, which I suppose amuse you, and of which I cannot do one. Perhaps those accomplishments, or tricks, change them so that they feel more than I do. But I do not believe it. If I had the chance of learning them I would do it, to please you. It would not make me love you any more. I believe that we, who think of few people because we know few, think of them more and more lovingly. But if I took trouble to please you, it would show you how much I love you. Perhaps—perhaps that is what you really want, that I should say more, act more, make a greater show. Is that it, after all?’
Her mood had changed while she was speaking, perhaps by the enumeration of her points of inferiority. She turned her bright eyes towards Greif with a look of curiosity, as though wondering whether she had hit the mark, as indeed she had, by a pure accident.
‘It cannot be that—I cannot be such a fool!’ Greif exclaimed with all the resentment of a man who has been found out in his selfishness.
‘I should not think any the worse of you,’ said Hilda. ‘It is I who have been foolish not to guess it before. How should you understand that I love you, merely because I say good morning and kiss you, and good evening and kiss you, and talk about the weather and your mother’s ribbands! There must be something more. And yet I feel that if you married some one else, I should be very unhappy and should perhaps die. Why not? There would not be anything to live for. Why can I not find some way of letting you know how I love you? There must be ways of showing it—but I have thought of everything I can do for you, and it is so little, for you have everything. Only—Greif, you must not doubt that I love you because I have no way of showing it—or if you do—’
‘Forgive me, Hilda—I never doubted—’
‘Oh, but you did, you did,’ answered Hilda with great emphasis, and in a tone which showed how deeply the words had wounded her. ‘It is natural, I suppose, and then, is it not better that I should know it? It is of no use to hide such things. I should have felt it, if you had not told me.’
It was not in Hilda’s nature to shed tears easily, for she had been exposed to so few emotions in her life that she had never acquired the habit of weeping. But there was something in her expression that moved Greif more than a fit of sobbing could have done. There was an evident strength in her resentment, even though it showed itself in temperate words, which indicated a greater solidity of character than the young man had given her credit for. He had not realised that a love developed by natural and slow degrees, without a shadow of opposition, could be deeper and more enduring than the spasmodic passion that springs up amidst the unstable surroundings of the world, ill nourished by an uncertain alternation of hope and fear, and prone to consume itself in the heat of its own expression. The one is about as different from the other
