“Not he,” cried Josephine. “A man’s sense of perspective is fairly
accurate. It is a woman who is wanting in this respect. We have so
accustomed ourselves to see only what is under our noses that we become
shortsighted and are utterly unable to perceive the size and significance
of everything at a distance. That is how it comes that something beneath
our eyes seems so enormous when after all, it is quite insignificant.
Oh, men do not take such narrow--such shortsighted views of the
incidents of life.”
“I am not so sure of that.”
“What, would you say that any man takes the same narrow view of an
incident like love as a woman takes of it? Oh, no. He is too wise. He
has his career in the world to think about--to shape; it is a matter
of impossibility with him to distort out of all proportion to its
importance that incident in his life known as love. That is how it
comes, I know, that you think I am very foolish to lay so much emphasis
as I have done upon so simple a thing as my giving you my promise and
keeping it hidden from my father and mother. You think that it is making
a fuss about nothing. You cannot understand how it should be the means
of making me suffer tortures--tortures!”
“On the contrary,” said the man, “I have myself suffered deeply knowing
that you were suffering and recognising as I do, that my want of
consideration for you--my selfishness--my want of appreciation for the
purest soul of woman that ever God sent on earth, was the direct cause
of your burden. I am glad that you wrote to me as you did, and I rejoice
that I am not selfish enough to hold you to the promise you made to me.”
She turned her eyes upon him and looked at him in more than surprise--in
actual amazement.
“You mean to say that you--you release me from my promise,” she said.
“I release you freely,” he replied. “Until I receive your father’s
consent to an engagement I will not think that there is any engagement
between us--there may be an understanding between us; but there
is nothing between us that need cause you uneasiness through its
concealment from your father and mother. When the day comes on which
I can ask your father’s consent to our engagement with some hope of
success, I shall not be slow to go to him, you may be sure; but till
then--you are free--you need not feel any self-reproach on the score of
concealing anything: there is nothing to conceal.”
She was dumb. She thought that she would have to fight for her freedom;
but lo, he had knocked the shackles off before she had uttered more than
a petulant complaint--she had no need to make any impassioned appeal
to him; the rhetoric on the subject of Freedom with which she was
fully acquainted she had no chance of drawing on. He had set her free
practically of his own free will.
She was too surprised to be able to do more than thank him in the
baldest way.