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"Ah, I've heard a great many girls talk like that beforehand," she answered at once with her society glibness; "but when the right man turned up, they soon forgot their protestations. It makes a lot of difference, dear, when a man really asks you!" Herminia bent her head. "You misunderstand me," she replied. "I don't mean to say I will never fall in love. I expect to do that.
Herminia brought back her eyes from infinity to his face. "That's true," she said frankly. "The magic link of sex that severs and unites us makes all the difference. And, indeed, I confess I wouldn't so have spoken of my inmost feelings to another woman." From that day forth, Alan and Herminia met frequently.
Alan hinted certain doubts as to their up-bringing and education. There, too, Herminia was perfectly frank. They would be half hers, half his; the pleasant burden of their support, the joy of their education, would naturally fall upon both parents equally. But why discuss these matters like the squalid rich, who make their marriages a question of settlements and dowries and business arrangements?
It was all very silly and irrational, no doubt, but it was life, it was reality; while the pretended earnestness of those pallid Somerville girls is all an affectation of one-sided culture." "That's just it," Herminia answered, leaning back on the rustic seat like David's Madame Recamier.
But once, when little Dolores was about five years old, Herminia happened to pass a church door in Marylebone, where a red-lettered placard announced in bold type that the Very Reverend the Dean of Dunwich would preach there on Sunday. It flashed across her mind that this was Sunday morning.
For even if the world could be made to admit that Herminia had done what she did from chaste and noble motives, which considering what we all know of the world, was improbable, yet at any rate it could never allow that he himself had acted from any but the vilest and most unworthy reasons.
Herminia knew her Virgil as well as Alan himself, and murmured half aloud the sonorous hexameter, "Romanos ad templa deum duxere triumphos." But somehow, the knowledge that these were indeed the milk-white bullocks of Clitumnus failed amid so much dust to arouse her enthusiasm. She would have been better pleased just then with a yellow English primrose.
The man gazed at her in surprise. Though he was prepared for much, he was scarcely prepared for such devotion to principle. "Oh, Herminia," he cried, "you can't mean it. You can't have thought of what it entails. Surely, surely, you won't carry your ideas of freedom to such an extreme, such a dangerous conclusion!" Herminia looked up at him, half hurt.
"YOU have made a curse of it!" Dolores answered, rising and glaring at her. "You have blighted my life for me. A good man and true was going to make me his wife. After this, how can I dare to palm myself off upon him?" She swept from the room. Though broken with sorrow, her step was resolute. Herminia followed her to her bed-room.
"But he married you before he died?" the father cried, in a tone of profound emotion. "He did justice to his child? he repaired his evil?" "He did not," Herminia answered, in a scarcely audible voice. "He was stanch to the end to his lifelong principles." "Why not?" the father asked, staggering. "Did he see my telegram?" "Yes," Herminia answered, numb with grief, yet too proud to prevaricate.
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