too good-natured to be aggressive, and living with her two unmarried daughters, whose sole care was the spiritual and material well-being of the village poor.
"Where I come from, I really don't know," said Helen to her friend. "My father was the staidest of country gentlemen. I'm a sport, plainly. You will see my mother watch me every now and then with apprehension. I fancy it surprises her that I really do behave myself--that I don't even say anything shocking. With you, the dear old lady is simply delighted; I know she prays that I may not harm you. You are the first respectable acquaintance I have made since my marriage."
In the lovely old garden, in the still meadows, and on the sheep-cropped hillsides, they had many a long talk. Now that Irene was as good as married, Mrs. Borisoff used less reserve in speaking of her private circumstances; she explained the terms on which she stood with her husband.
"Marriage, my dear girl, is of many kinds; absurd to speak of it as one and indivisible. There's the marriage of interest, the marriage of reason, the marriage of love; and each of these classes can be almost infinitely subdivided. For the majority of folk, I'm quite sure it would be better not to choose their own husbands and wives, but to leave it to sensible friends who wish them well. In England, at all events, they _think_ they marry for love, but that's mere nonsense. Did you ever know a love match? I never even heard of one, in my little world. Well," she added, with her roguish smile, "putting yourself out of the question."
Irene's countenance betrayed a passing inquietude. She had an air of reflection; averted her eyes; did not speak.
"The average male or female is _never_ in love," pursued Helen. "They are incapable of it. And in this matter I--_moi qui vous parle_--am average. At least, I think I am; all evidence goes to prove it, so far. I married my husband because I thought him the most interesting man I had ever met. That was eight years ago, when I was two-and-twenty. Curiously, I didn't try to persuade myself that I was in love; I take credit for this, my dear! No, it was a marriage of reason. I had money, which Mr. Borisoff had not. He really liked me, and does still. But we are reasonable as ever. If we felt obliged to live always together, we should be very uncomfortable. As it is, I travel for six months when the humour takes me, and it works _a merveille_. Into my husband's life, I don't inquire; I have no right to do so, and I am not by nature a busybody. As for my own affairs, Mr. Borisoff is not uneasy; he has great faith in me--which, speaking frankly, I quite deserve. I am, my dear Irene, a most respectable woman--there comes in my parentage."
"Then," said Irene, looking at her own beautiful fingernails, "your experience, after all, is disillusion."
"Moderate disillusion," replied the other, with her humorously judicial air. "I am not grievously disappointed. I still find my husband an interesting--a most interesting--man. Both of us being so thoroughly reasonable, our marriage may be called a success."
"Clearly, then, you don't think love a _sine qua non_?"
"Clearly not. Love has nothing whatever to do with marriage, in the statistical--the ordinary--sense of the term. When I say love, I mean love--not domestic affection. Marriage is a practical concern of mankind at large; Love is a personal experience of the very few. Think of our common phrases, such as 'choice of a wife'; think of the perfectly sound advice given by sage elders to the young who are thinking of marriage, implying deliberation, care. What have these things to do with love? You can no more choose to be a lover, than to be a poet. _Nascitur non fit_--oh yes, I know my Latin. Generally, the man or woman born for love is born for nothing else."
"A deplorable state of things!" exclaimed Irene, laughing.
"Yes--or no. Who knows? Such people ought to die young. But I don't say that it is invariably the case. To be capable of loving, and at the same time to have other faculties, and the will to use them--ah! There's your complete human being."
"I think----" Irene began, and stopped, her voice failing.
"You think, _belle Irene_?"
"Oh, I was going to say that all this seems to me sensible and right. It doesn't disturb me."
"Why should it?"
"I think I will tell you, Helen, that my motive in marrying is the same as yours was."
"I surmised it."
"But, you know, there the similarity will end. It is quite certain"--she laughed--"that I shall have no six-months' vacations. At present, I don't think I shall desire them."
"No. To speak frankly, I auger well of your marriage."
These words affected Irene with a sense of relief. She had imagined that Mrs. Borisoff thought otherwise. A bright smile sunned her countenance; Helen, observing it, smiled too, but more thoughtfully.
"You must bring your husband to see me in Paris some time next year. By the bye, you don't think he will disapprove of me?"
"Do you imagine Mr. Jacks----"
"What were you going to say?"
Irene had stopped as if for want of the right word She was reflecting.
"It never struck me," she said, "that he would wish to regulate my choice of friends. Yet I suppose it would be within his right?"
"Conventionally speaking, undoubtedly."
"Don't think I am in uncertainty about this particular instance," said Irene. "No, he has already told me that he liked you. But of the general question, I had never thought."
"My dear, who does, or can, think before marriage of all that it involves? After all, the pleasures of life consist so largely in the unexpected."
Irene paced a few yards in silence, and when she spoke again it was of quite another subject.
Whether this sojourn with her experienced and philosophical friend made her better able to face the meeting with Arnold Jacks was not quite certain. At moments she fancied so; she saw her position as wholly reasonable, void of anxiety; she was about to marry the man she liked and respected--safest of all forms of marriage. But there came troublesome moods of misgiving. It did not flatter her self-esteem to think of herself as excluded from the number of those who are capable of love; even in Helen Borisoff's view, the elect, the fortunate. Of love, she had thought more in this last week or two than in all her years gone by. Assuredly, she knew it not, this glory of the poets. Yet she could inspire it in others; at all events, in one, whose rhythmic utterance of the passion ever and again came back to her mind.
A temptation had assailed her (but she resisted it) to repeat those verses of Piers Otway to her friend. And in thinking of them, she half reproached herself for the total silence she had preserved towards their author. Perhaps he was uncertain whether the verses had ever reached her. It seemed unkind. There would have been no harm in letting him know that she had read the lines, and--as poetry--liked them.
Was her temper prosaic? It would at any time have surprised her to be told so. Owing to her father's influence, she had given much time to scientific studies, but she knew herself by no means defective in appreciation of art and literature. By whatever accident, the friends of her earlier years had been notable rather for good sense and good feeling than for aesthetic fervour; the one exception, her cousin Olga, had rather turned her from thoughts about the beautiful, for Olga seemed emotional in excess, and was not
