CHAPTER II

________________________________________________
_ On the Fenno threshold a sudden sense of the futility of the attempt
had almost driven Mrs. Quentin back to her carriage; but the door
was already opening, and a parlor-maid who believed that Miss Fenno
was in led the way to the depressing drawing-room. It was the kind
of room in which no member of the family is likely to be found
except after dinner or after death. The chairs and tables looked
like poor relations who had repaid their keep by a long career of
grudging usefulness: they seemed banded together against intruders
in a sullen conspiracy of discomfort. Mrs. Quentin, keenly
susceptible to such influences, read failure in every angle of the
upholstery. She was incapable of the vulgar error of thinking that
Hope Fenno might be induced to marry Alan for his money; but between
this assumption and the inference that the girl's imagination might
be touched by the finer possibilities of wealth, good taste admitted
a distinction. The Fenno furniture, however, presented to such
reasoning the obtuseness of its black-walnut chamferings; and
something in its attitude suggested that its owners would be as
uncompromising. The room showed none of the modern attempts at
palliation, no apologetic draping of facts; and Mrs. Quentin,
provisionally perched on a green-reps Gothic sofa with which it was
clearly impossible to establish any closer relations, concluded
that, had Mrs. Fenno needed another seat of the same size, she would
have set out placidly to match the one on which her visitor now
languished.

To Mrs. Quentin's fancy, Hope Fenno's opinions, presently imparted
in a clear young voice from the opposite angle of the Gothic sofa,
partook of the character of their surroundings. The girl's mind was
like a large light empty place, scantily furnished with a few
massive prejudices, not designed to add to any one's comfort but too
ponderous to be easily moved. Mrs. Quentin's own intelligence, in
which its owner, in an artistically shaded half-light, had so long
moved amid a delicate complexity of sensations, seemed in comparison
suddenly close and crowded; and in taking refuge there from the
glare of the young girl's candor, the older woman found herself
stumbling in an unwonted obscurity. Her uneasiness resolved itself
into a sense of irritation against her listener. Mrs. Quentin knew
that the momentary value of any argument lies in the capacity of the
mind to which it is addressed, and as her shafts of persuasion spent
themselves against Miss Fenno's obduracy, she said to herself that,
since conduct is governed by emotions rather than ideas, the really
strong people are those who mistake their sensations for opinions.
Viewed in this light, Miss Fenno was certainly very strong: there
was an unmistakable ring of finality in the tone with which she
declared,

"It's impossible."

Mrs. Quentin's answer veiled the least shade of feminine resentment.
"I told Alan that, where he had failed, there was no chance of my
making an impression."

Hope Fenno laid on her visitor's an almost reverential hand. "Dear
Mrs. Quentin, it's the impression you make that confirms the
impossibility."

Mrs. Quentin waited a moment: she was perfectly aware that, where
her feelings were concerned, her sense of humor was not to be relied
on. "Do I make such an odious impression?" she asked at length, with
a smile that seemed to give the girl her choice of two meanings.

"You make such a beautiful one! It's too beautiful--it obscures my
judgment."

Mrs. Quentin looked at her thoughtfully. "Would it be permissible, I
wonder, for an older woman to suggest that, at your age, it isn't
always a misfortune to have what one calls one's judgment
temporarily obscured?"

Miss Fenno flushed. "I try not to judge others--"

"You judge Alan."

"Ah, _he_ is not others," she murmured, with an accent that touched
the older woman.

"You judge his mother."

"I don't; I don't!"

Mrs. Quentin pressed her point. "You judge yourself, then, as you
would be in my position--and your verdict condemns me."

"How can you think it? It's because I appreciate the difference in
our point of view that I find it so difficult to defend myself--"

"Against what?"

"The temptation to imagine that I might be as _you_ are--feeling as
I do."

Mrs. Quentin rose with a sigh. "My child, in my day love was less
subtle." She added, after a moment, "Alan is a perfect son."

"Ah, that again--that makes it worse!"

"Worse?"

"Just as your goodness does, your sweetness, your immense indulgence
in letting me discuss things with you in a way that must seem almost
an impertinence."

Mrs. Quentin's smile was not without irony. "You must remember that
I do it for Alan."

"That's what I love you for!" the girl instantly returned; and again
her tone touched her listener.

"And yet you're sacrificing him--and to an idea!"

"Isn't it to ideas that all the sacrifices that were worth while
have been made?"

"One may sacrifice one's self."

Miss Fenno's color rose. "That's what I'm doing," she said gently.

Mrs. Quentin took her hand. "I believe you are," she answered. "And
it isn't true that I speak only for Alan. Perhaps I did when I
began; but now I want to plead for you too--against yourself." She
paused, and then went on with a deeper note: "I have let you, as you
say, speak your mind to me in terms that some women might have
resented, because I wanted to show you how little, as the years go
on, theories, ideas, abstract conceptions of life, weigh against the
actual, against the particular way in which life presents itself to
us--to women especially. To decide beforehand exactly how one ought
to behave in given circumstances is like deciding that one will
follow a certain direction in crossing an unexplored country.
Afterward we find that we must turn out for the obstacles--cross the
rivers where they're shallowest--take the tracks that others have
beaten--make all sorts of unexpected concessions. Life is made up of
compromises: that is what youth refuses to understand. I've lived
long enough to doubt whether any real good ever came of sacrificing
beautiful facts to even more beautiful theories. Do I seem
casuistical? I don't know--there may be losses either way...but
the love of the man one loves...of the child one loves...
that makes up for everything...."

She had spoken with a thrill which seemed to communicate itself to
the hand her listener had left in hers. Her eyes filled suddenly,
but through their dimness she saw the girl's lips shape a last
desperate denial:

"Don't you see it's because I feel all this that I mustn't--that I
can't?" _

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