This speech, vexatiously enigmatic then, sounded suddenly rational now. It meant that he had unconsciously bestowed upon her his idealized conception of womanhood. This was made comparatively easy because in the plays Marien almost invariably enacted the heroines, always sweet, always gentle, and almost always good; or, if erring, they were more sinned against than sinning. Most of these piled-up virtues of her rôles John dotingly had ascribed to her, and his professional contacts afforded few glimpses of the real Marien by which his drawing could be corrected.
Atop of this had come those few hours of delicious intimacy in her apartment, when she had deliberately played the part she saw that he would like. This had sufficed to make his illusion complete.
Still John had no reproaches for the actress. Instead, he found within him a renascence of respect for her, particularly for her frankness. Most women—most men, too, for that matter, he thought—play the hypocrite with themselves and with others. He must do her full credit. She had not done so. She might have ruined him. He owed his escape to no discernment of his own. When he had not understood, she had resolutely played the scene out for him—to the uttermost. It must have cost a woman, any woman, something to do that, he reasoned. Under this interpretation, Marien was no longer repulsive to him. Instead, he found in her something to admire. Her courage was sublime. Her devotion to her god, ambition, if terrible, was also magnificent.
"Yet, why," he asked himself, "did she let me take her in my arms? Sympathy," he answered at last. "She never loved me. A woman who loved a man could not do what she did in the restaurant. She was very sorry for me, that was all. She let me kiss her as she would let a dog lick her hand." And then he remembered another
