The Brimming Cup | Page 6

ever could have met,
do you, dear?"
He offered her this, with a look half of apology, half of simple courage.
She considered it and him seriously, studying his face and eyes,
listening retrospectively to the accent of his words, and immensely
astonished him by suddenly flashing a kiss on his cheek. "You're
miraculous!" she said. "You don't know how it feels; as though I'd been

floundering in a marsh, deeper and deeper, and then all at once, when I
thought I'd come to know there wasn't anything in the world but marsh,
to come out on beautiful, fine, clean earth, where I feel the very
strength of ages under my feet. You don't know how good it seems to
have a silly, romantic remark like what I said, answered the way you
did, telling the truth; how good it feels to be pulled down to what's
what, and to know you can do it and really love me too."
He had been so startled and moved by her kiss that he had heard her
words but vaguely. "I don't seem to catch hold of all that. What's it all
about?"
"It's all about the fact that I really begin to believe that you will be loyal
and tell me the truth," she told him.
He saw cause for gravity in this, remembering the great moment so
shortly back of them, and said with a surprised and hurt accent, "Didn't
you believe me, when I said I would?"
She took up his hand in hers and said rapidly, "Dear Neale, I did
believe it, for just a moment, and I can't believe anything good of
anybody for longer than that, not really in my heart of hearts. And it's
my turn to tell you some truth when I tell you about that unbelief, what
I've hardly even ever told myself, right out in words."
He was listening now, fixing on her a look of profound, intelligent
attention, as she went on, stumbling, reaching out for words, discarding
those she found, only her steady gaze giving coherence to her statement.
"You know, living the way I have . . . I've told you . . . I've seen a great
deal more than most girls have. And then, half brought up in France
with people who are clever and have their eyes wide open, people who
really count, I've seen how they don't believe in humans, or goodness,
or anything that's not base. They know life is mostly bad and cruel and
dull and low, and above all that it's bound to fool you if you trust to it,
or get off your guard a single minute. They don't teach you that, you
know; but you see it's what they believe and what they spend all their
energies trying to dodge a little, all they think they can. Then
everything you read, except the silly little Bibliothèque-Rose sort of

thing, makes you know that it's true . . . Anatole France, and
Maupassant, and Schnitzler. Of course back in America you find lots of
nice people who don't believe that. But they're so sweet you know
they'd swallow anything that made things look pleasant. So you don't
dare take their word for anything. They won't even look at what's bad in
everybody's life, they just pretend it's not there, not in their husbands,
or wives or children, and so you know they're fooled." She lowered her
voice, which faltered a little, but she still continued to look straight into
his eyes, "And as for love, why, I've just hated the sound of the name
and . . . I'm horribly afraid of it, even now."
He asked her gravely, "Don't you love me? Don't you think that I love
you?"
She looked at him piteously, wincing, bracing herself with an effort to
be brave. "I must try to be as honest as I want you to be. Yes, I love
you, Neale, with all my heart a thousand times more than I ever
dreamed I could love anybody. But how do I know that I'm not
somehow fooling myself: but that maybe all that huge unconscious
inheritance from all my miserable ancestors hasn't got me, somehow,
and you too? How do I know that I'm not being fooled by Nature and
fooling you with fine words?"
She hesitated, probing deep into her heart, and brought out now, like a
great and unexpected treasure, "But, Neale, listen! I don't think that
about you! I don't believe you're being fooled. Why, I believe in you
more than in myself!" She was amazed at this and radiant.
Then she asked him, "Neale, how do you manage about all this? What
do you feel about all the capacity for being low and bad, that everybody
has? Aren't