There are men who, of their natures, do not like women, even though they may have wives and legions of daughters, and be surrounded by things feminine in all the affairs of their lives. Others again have their strongest affinities and sympathies with women, and are rarely altogether happy when removed from their influence. Paul Montague was of the latter sort. At this time he was thoroughly in love with Hetta Carbury, and was not in love with Mrs Hurtle. He would have given much of his golden prospects in the American railway to have had Mrs Hurtle reconveyed suddenly to San Francisco. And yet he had a delight in her presence. 'The acting isn't very good,' he said when the piece was nearly over.
'What does it signify? What we enjoy or what we suffer depends upon the humour. The acting is not first-rate, but I have listened and laughed and cried, because I have been happy.'
He was bound to tell her that he also had enjoyed the evening, and was bound to say it in no voice of hypocritical constraint. 'It has been very jolly,' he said.
'And one has so little that is really jolly, as you call it. I wonder whether any girl ever did sit and cry like that because her lover talked to another woman. What I find fault with is that the writers and actors are so ignorant of men and women as we see them every day. It's all right that she should cry, but she wouldn't cry there.' The position described was so nearly her own, that he could say nothing to this. She had so spoken on purpose,--fighting her own battle after her own fashion, knowing well that her words would confuse him. 'A woman hides such tears. She may be found crying because she is unable to hide them;--but she does not willingly let the other woman see them. Does she?'
'I suppose not.'
'Medea did not weep when she was introduced to Creusa.'
'Women are not all Medeas,' he replied.
'There's a dash of the savage princess about most of them. I am quite ready if you like. I never want to see the curtain fall. And I have had no nosegay brought in a wheelbarrow to throw on to the stage. Are you going to see me home?'
'Certainly.'
'You need not. I'm not a bit afraid of a London cab by myself.' But of course he accompanied her to Islington. He owed her at any rate as much as that. She continued to talk during the whole journey. What a wonderful place London was,--so immense, but so dirty! New York of course was not so big, but was, she thought, pleasanter. But Paris was the gem of gems among towns. She did not like Frenchmen, and she liked Englishmen even better than Americans; but she fancied that she could never like English women. 'I do so hate all kinds of buckram. I like good conduct, and law, and religion too if it be not forced down one's throat; but I hate what your women call propriety. I suppose what we have been doing to-night is very improper; but I am quite sure that it has not been in the least wicked.'