“It would, I presume, unless she should chance to be the very one woman I am talking about,” he replied, impressively.
“I should think she would have her work cut out for her under any circumstances,” added Berenice, lightly, but with a touch of sympathy in her voice.
“I am making a confession,” replied Cowperwood, seriously and a little heavily. “I am not apologizing for myself.
The women I have known would make ideal wives for some men, but not for me.
Life has taught me that much.
It has changed me.”
“And do you think the process has stopped by any means?” she replied, quaintly, with that air of superior banter which puzzled, fascinated, defied him.
“No, I will not say that.
My ideal has become fixed, though, apparently.
I have had it for a number of years now.
It spoils other matters for me.
There is such a thing as an ideal.
We do have a pole-star in physics.”
As he said this Cowperwood realized that for him he was making a very remarkable confession.
He had come here primarily to magnetize her and control her judgment.
As a matter of fact, it was almost the other way about.
She was almost dominating him.
Lithe, slender, resourceful, histrionic, she was standing before him making him explain himself, only he did not see her so much in that light as in the way of a large, kindly, mothering intelligence which could see, feel, and understand.
She would know how it was, he felt sure.
He could make himself understood if he tried.
Whatever he was or had been, she would not take a petty view.
She could not.
Her answers thus far guaranteed as much.
“Yes,” she replied, “we do have a pole-star, but you do not seem able to find it.
Do you expect to find your ideal in any living woman?”
“I have found it,” he answered, wondering at the ingenuity and complexity of her mind—and of his own, for that matter—of all mind indeed. Deep below deep it lay, staggering him at times by its fathomless reaches.
“I hope you will take seriously what I am going to say, for it will explain so much.
When I began to be interested in your picture I was so because it coincided with the ideal I had in mind—the thing that you think changes swiftly.
That was nearly seven years ago. Since then it has never changed. When I saw you at your school on Riverside Drive I was fully convinced.
Although I have said nothing, I have remained so.
Perhaps you think I had no right to any such feelings.
Most people would agree with you.
I had them and do have them just the same, and it explains my relation to your mother.
When she came to me once in Louisville and told me of her difficulties I was glad to help her for your sake.
That has been my reason ever since, although she does not know that.
In some respects, Berenice, your mother is a little dull.
All this while I have been in love with you—intensely so.
As you stand there now you seem to me amazingly beautiful—the ideal I have been telling you about.
Don’t be disturbed; I sha’n’t press any attentions on you.” (Berenice had moved very slightly.
She was concerned as much for him as for herself.
His power was so wide, his power so great. She could not help taking him seriously when he was so serious.)
“I have done whatever I have done in connection with you and your mother because I have been in love with you and because I wanted you to become the splendid thing I thought you ought to become.
You have not known it, but you are the cause of my building the house on Fifth Avenue—the principal reason.
I wanted to build something worthy of you.
A dream?
Certainly.
Everything we do seems to have something of that quality.
Its beauty, if there is any, is due to you.
I made it beautiful thinking of you.”
He paused, and Berenice gave no sign.