He lowered his eyes, that he might not read her thoughts, that she might not read the same thoughts in his own mind. "You often make me think of the lake out there," said he. "There’s the surface one sees at a glance. Then there’s a little distance below the surface, that one sees when he looks intently straight down. And then there’s fathoms on fathoms where all sorts of strange things—strange thoughts and feelings—lie hid. Sometimes—for an instant—one of them shows or almost shows at the surface."
"When one lives alone a great deal, one gets the habit of living within oneself—don’t you think?"
"I suppose that’s it—partly. A brook couldn’t hide very much—and most people are like brooks or ponds. The ones that seem to have depth seem so simply because the water’s muddy."
She looked admiringly at him; and her admiration of his originality and insight did not lessen when he added, "At least, so a friend of mine used to say." He returned to _the_ subject. "Then—I may stay?"
Her face brightened. In her eyes as they looked at a smile slowly dawned. Quickly all her features were responding, especially that wide, expressive fascinating mouth. "I hope you will. But—no more dreariness!"
"I hate gloom as much as you do." He glanced round the room—at the harmonies of woodwork and walls and furnishing, with here and there bright flowers always in the restraint of those of gentle hue. "As much as you do," repeated he. "And that’s saying a great deal. How _do_ you manage it!—house and garden, always gay yet never gaudy—and such variety! Is there no end to your variety?"
"Oh, one’s a new person every day, isn’t one?—and different."
"_You_ certainly are. But no one else I ever saw." He colored furiously at his finding himself, without intending it, upon the forbidden ground. She had turned away, and was leaving the room—the safest course, since it enabled her to hide her pleasure in the compliment that peculiarly appealed to her, and also seemed to give him a sufficient yet not harsh rebuke.
Her aversion to restraint was perhaps stronger than is the average woman’s—certainly had more courage. She had been too thoroughly trained in the conventionalities not to have the familiar timidity as to action, so strong in all conventionally bred people, so dominant over women. But the "unhand-me" spirit of her time was finding outlet in thought and feeling. Reflecting much in her aloneness, she had reached many audacious conclusions about life and the true meaning of its comedy drama—that meaning so different from what we pretend, from what usually passes as truth in history, philosophy, and literature, based as they are upon man’s cheap hankering for idealistic strut. The audacities of thought that occasionally showed at her surface in speech or commentary of smiling eyes and lips were conventional in comparison with whole schools of deep-swimming ideas and fancies that kept hours of aloneness from being hours of loneliness. Physically, her passion for freedom showed itself in her dislike of tight or stuffy garments. She could pass her hand round her waist inside her closest-fitting corset. Her liking for few clothes and for as little yoke and sleeves as custom allowed came not from the thought for the other sex that often explains this taste, but from aversion to restraint.