'Do you think I shall ever forget your preferences and dislikings? Do you recollect telling me about that blue scarf of mine, that I should never wear blue?'
She stretched herself out towards him, waiting for an answer, so that he was obliged to speak. 'Of course I do. Black is your colour;--black and grey; or white,--and perhaps yellow when you choose to be gorgeous; crimson possibly. But not blue or green.'
'I never thought much of it before, but I have taken your word for gospel. It is very good to have an eye for such things,--as you have, Paul. But I fancy that taste comes with, or at any rate forebodes, an effete civilization.'
'I am sorry that mine should be effete,' he said smiling.
'You know what I mean, Paul. I speak of nations, not individuals. Civilization was becoming effete, or at any rate men were, in the time of the great painters; but Savonarola and Galileo were individuals. You should throw your lot in with a new people. This railway to Mexico gives you the chance.'
'Are the Mexicans a new people?'
'They who will rule the Mexicans are. All American women I dare say have bad taste in gowns,--and so the vain ones and rich ones send to Paris for their finery; but I think our taste in men is generally good. We like our philosophers; we like our poets; we like our genuine workmen;--but we love our heroes. I would have you a hero, Paul.' He got up from his chair and walked about the room in an agony of despair. To be told that he was expected to be a hero at the very moment in his life in which he felt more devoid of heroism, more thoroughly given up to cowardice than he had ever been before, was not to be endured! And yet, with what utmost stretch of courage,--even though he were willing to devote himself certainly and instantly to the worst fate that he had pictured to himself,--could he immediately rush away from these abstract speculations, encumbered as they were with personal flattery, into his own most unpleasant, most tragic matter! It was the unfitness that deterred him and not the possible tragedy. Nevertheless, through it all, he was sure,--nearly sure,--that she was playing her game, and playing it in direct antagonism to the game which she knew that he wanted to play. Would it not be better that he should go away and write another letter? In a letter he could at any rate say what he had to say;--and having said it he would then strengthen himself to adhere to it.