He. You flatter me. Will you sit down? She. Thank you. How glad one is when a ball is over. It is almost worth enduring it all, just to experience the relief of getting through with it. He. What a world-weary sentiment for one so young and doubtless so fair. She. Oh, everybody is young in a mask, and by benefit of the same doubt, I suppose, everybody is fair as well. He. It were easy in the present case to settle all doubts by dropping the mask. She. No, thank you. The doubt does not trouble me, so why should I take pains to dispel it? Say I am five hundred; I feel it. [58] [58] He. What indifference; and in one who waltzes so well, too. Will you not give me another turn? She. Pardon me. I am tired. He. And you can resist music with such a sound of the sea in it? She. It is not melancholy enough for the sea. He. Is the sea so solemn to you, then? She. Inexpressibly. It is just that—solemn. It is too sad for anger, and too great and grave for repining; it is as awful as fate. He. I confess it never struck me so. She. It did not me always. It was while I was in Britany—where I got this peasant dress; isn’t it quaint?—that I learned to know the sea. It judged me; it reiterated one burden over and over until it seemed to me that I should go mad; yet at the same time its calmness gave me self-control. If there had been the slightest trace of anger or relenting in its accusations, I could have turned away easily enough, and shaken its influence all off. But it was like an awful tribunal before which I had to stand silent, and review my past as interpreted by inexorable justice,—with no palliations, no shams, nothing but honest truth. But why should I say all this rigmarole to you? You must be amused,—if
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