The Firing Line | Page 5

pretend an imbecile indifference to you or to the situation would be a more absurd example of self-consciousness than even you have charged me with."
Wrath and surprise in her turn widened her eyes; he held up his hand: "One moment; I have not finished. May I go on?"
And, as she said nothing, he resumed: "During the few minutes we have been accidentally thrown together, I have not seen a quiver of human humour in you. There is the self-consciousness--the absorbed preoccupation with appearances."
"What is there humourous in the situation?" she demanded, very pink.
"Good Lord! What is there humourous in any situation if you don't make it so?"
"I am not a humourist," she said.
She sat in the bows, one closed hand propping her chin; and sometimes her clear eyes, harboring lightning, wandered toward him, sometimes toward the shore.
"Suppose you continue to row," she said at last. "I'm doing you the honour of thinking about what you've said."
He resumed the oars, still sitting facing her, and pushed the boat slowly forward; and, as they continued their progress in silence, her brooding glance wavered, at intervals, between him and the coast.
"Haven't you any normal human curiosity concerning me?" he asked so boyishly that, for a second, again from her eyes, two gay little demons seemed to peer out and laugh at him.
But her lips were expressionless, and she only said: "I have no curiosity. Is that criminally abnormal?"
"Yes; if it is true. Is it?"
"I suppose it is too unflattering a truth for you to believe." She checked herself, looked up at him, hesitated. "It is not absolutely true. It was at first. I am normally interested now. If you knew more about me you would very easily understand my lack of interest in people I pass; the habit of not permitting myself to be interested--the necessity of it. The art of indifference is far more easily acquired than the art of forgetting."
"But surely," he said, "it can cost you no effort to forget me."
"No, of course not." She looked at him, unsmiling: "It was the acquired habit of indifference in me which you mistook for--I think you mistook it for stupidity. Many do. Did you?"
But the guilty amusement on his face answered her; she watched him silently for a while.
"You are quite right in one way," she said; "an unconventional encounter like this has no significance--not enough to dignify it with any effort toward indifference. But until I began to reprove man in the abstract, I really had not very much interest in you as an individual."
And, as he said nothing: "I might better have been in the beginning what you call 'human'--found the situation mildly amusing--and it _is_--though you don't know it! But"--she hesitated--"the acquired instinct operated automatically. I wish I had been more--human; I can be." She raised her eyes; and in them glimmered her first smile, faint, yet so charming a revelation that the surprise of it held him motionless at his oars.
"Have I paid the tribute you claim?" she asked. "If I have, may I not go overboard at my convenience?"
He did not answer. She laid both arms along the gunwales once more, balancing herself to rise.
"We are near enough now," she said, "and the fog is quite gone. May I thank you and depart without further arousing you to psychological philosophy?"
"If you must," he said; "but I'd rather row you in."
"If I must? Do you expect to paddle me around Cape Horn?" And she rose and stepped lightly onto the bow, maintaining her balance without effort while the boat pitched, fearless, confident, swaying there between sky and sea.
"Good-bye," she said, gravely nodding at him.
"Good-bye, Calypso!"
She joined her finger tips above her head, preliminary to a plunge. Then she looked down at him over her shoulder.
"I told you that Calypso was a land nymph."
"I can't help it; fabled Calypso you must remain to me."
"Oh; am I to remain--anything--to you--for the next five minutes?"
"Do you think I could forget you?"
"I don't think so--for five minutes. Your satisfied vanity will retain me for so long--until it becomes hungry again. And--but read the history of Ulysses--carefully. However, it was nice of you--not to name yourself and expect a response from me. I'm afraid--I'm afraid it is going to take me almost five minutes to forget you--I mean your boat of course. Good-bye!"
Before he could speak again she went overboard, rose swimming with effortless grace. After a dozen strokes or so she turned on one side, glancing back at him. Later, almost among the breakers, she raised one arm in airy signal, but whether to him or to somebody on the raft he did not know.
For five minutes--the allotted five--he lay on his oars watching the sands. At moments he fancied he could still distinguish her, but the distance was great, and there