“Yes, I think so,” and the girl nodded her head, but she did not give the reasons for her opinion. She knew that Ida Gulmore had been in love with him, so she shrank instinctively from mentioning her name, partly because it might make him pity her, and partly because the love of another woman for him seemed to diminish her pride of exclusive possession. She therefore kept silence while seeking for a way to warn her lover without revealing the truth, which might set him thinking of Ida Gulmore and her fascinating because unrequited passion. At length she said:
“Mr. Gulmore has injured father. He knows him: you'd better take his opinion.”
“Your father advises me to have nothing more to do with the election.” He didn't say it to try her; he trusted her completely. The girl's answer was emphatic:
“Oh, that's what you should do; I'm frightened for you. Why need you make enemies? The election isn't worth that, indeed it isn't. If father wants to run for Mayor, let him; he knows what he's about. But you, you should do great things, write a great book; and make every one as proud of you as I am.” Her face flushed with enthusiasm. She felt relieved, too; somehow she had got into the spirit of her part once more. But her lover took the hot face and eager speech as signs of affection, and he drew her to him while his face lit up with joy.
“You darling, darling! You overrate me, dear, but that does me good: makes me work harder. What a pity it is, May, that one can't add a cubit to his stature. I'd be a giant then.... But never fear; it'll be all right. You wouldn't wish me, I'm sure, to run away from a conflict I have provoked; but now I must see my father about those debts, and then we'll have a drive, or perhaps you'd go with me to him. You could wait in the buggy for me. You know I have to speak again this evening.”
The girl consented at once, but she was not satisfied with the decision her lover had come to. “It's too plain,” she thought in her clear, common-sense way, “that he's getting into a 'fuss' when he might just as well, or better, keep out of it.”
May was eminently practical, and not at all as emotional as one might have inferred from the sensitive, quick-changing colour that at one moment flushed her cheeks and at another ebbed, leaving her pallid, as with passion. Not that she was hardhearted or selfish. Far from it. But her surroundings had moulded her as they do women. Her mother had been one of the belles of Baltimore, a Southerner, too, by temperament. May had a brother and a sister older than herself (both were now married), and a younger brother who had taken care that she should not be spoiled for want of direct personal criticism. It was this younger brother, Joe, who first called her “Towhead,” and even now he often made disparaging remarks about “girls who didn't weigh 130”--in Joe's eyes, a Venus of Rubens would have seemed perfect. May was not vain of her looks; indeed, she had only come to take pleasure in them of recent years. As a young girl, comparing herself with her mother, she feared that she would always be “quite homely.” Her glass and the attentions of men had gradually shown her the pleasant truth. She did not, however, even now, overrate her beauty greatly. But her character had been modified to advantage in those schoolgirl days, when, with bitter tears, she admitted to herself that she was not pretty. Her teacher's praise of her quickness and memory had taught her to set her pride on learning. And indeed she had been an intelligent child, gifted with a sponge-like faculty of assimilating all kinds of knowledge--the result, perhaps, of generations of educated forbears. The admiration paid to her looks did not cause her to relax her intellectual efforts. But when at the University she found herself outgrowing the ordinary standards of opinion, conceit at first took possession of her. It seemed to her manifest that she had always underrated herself. She was astonished by her own excessive modesty, and keenly interested in it. She had thought herself ugly and she was beautiful, and now it was evident that she was a genius as well. With soul mightily uplifted by dreams of all she would do and the high part she would play in life, always nobly serious, yet with condescension of exquisite charming kindliness, taking herself gravely for a perfect product of the race and time, she proceeded to write the book which should discover to mankind all her qualities--the delicacy, nobility, and sweetness of an ideal nature.