Chapter 10

"That will matter little," I presently replied. "Telling you will do
no good."

"Ah, why do you say that?" murmured Aurora Church.

I said it partly because it was true; but I said it for other reasons
as well, which it was hard to define. Standing there bare-headed, in
the night air, in the vague light, this young lady looked extremely
interesting; and the interest of her appearance was not diminished by
a suspicion on my own part that she had come into the garden knowing
me to be there. I thought her a charming girl, and I felt very sorry
for her; but, as I looked at her, the terms in which Madame Beaurepas
had ventured to characterise her recurred to me with a certain force.
I had professed a contempt for them at the time, but it now came into
my head that perhaps this unfortunately situated, this insidiously
mutinous young creature, was looking out for a preserver. She was
certainly not a girl to throw herself at a man's head, but it was
possible that in her intense--her almost morbid-desire to put into
effect an ideal which was perhaps after all charged with as many
fallacies as her mother affirmed, she might do something reckless and
irregular--something in which a sympathetic compatriot, as yet
unknown, would find his profit. The image, unshaped though it was,
of this sympathetic compatriot, filled me with a sort of envy. For
some moments I was silent, conscious of these things, and then I
answered her question. "Because some things--some differences are
felt, not learned. To you liberty is not natural; you are like a
person who has bought a repeater, and, in his satisfaction, is
constantly making it sound. To a real American girl her liberty is a
very vulgarly-ticking old clock."

"Ah, you mean, then," said the poor girl, "that my mother has ruined
me?"

"Ruined you?"

"She has so perverted my mind, that when I try to be natural I am
necessarily immodest."

"That again is a false note," I said, laughing.

She turned away. "I think you are cruel."

"By no means," I declared; "because, for my own taste, I prefer you
as--as--"

I hesitated, and she turned back. "As what?"

"As you are."

She looked at me a while again, and then she said, in a little
reasoning voice that reminded me of her mother's, only that it was
conscious and studied, "I was not aware that I am under any
particular obligation to please you!" And then she gave a clear
laugh, quite at variance with her voice.

"Oh, there is no obligation," I said, "but one has preferences. I am
very sorry you are going