human
What you said about her disillusionment interested me very much, I told him.
gpt
You see, I've just come through an experience something like it myself, do you mind talking about her?
human
Not in this place--and this mood--and to you, he answered.
gpt
But first--what disillusioned you?
human
Disappointment in someone I cared for,--and believed in.
gpt
It was the same with--my sister.
human
Poor Princess.
gpt
Yes, poor Princess. Was it--a man friend who disappointed you?
human
A woman. The old story. As a matter of fact, she threw me over because another fellow had a lot more money than I.
gpt
Horrid creature.
human
Oh, just an ordinary, conventional, well brought up girl. Now you see I have as much right to a grudge against women, as your sister the Princess has against men.
gpt
But I don't believe the girl _could_ have been as cruel to you, as this man I'm thinking of was to--her. They'd known each other for years, since childhood. He used to call her his 'little sweetheart' when she was ten and he was fifteen. How was she to dream that even when he was a boy, he didn't really like her better than other little girls, that already he was making calculations about her money? She thought he was different from the others, that _he_ cared for herself. They were engaged, the bridesmaids asked, the trousseau ready, the invitations out for the wedding, and then--one night she overheard a conversation between him and a cousin of his, who was to be one of her bridesmaids. Only a few words--but they told everything. It was the other girl he loved, and had always loved. But he was poor, and so--well, you can guess the rest. My sister broke off her engagement the next day, though the man went on his knees to her, and vowed he had been mad. Then she left home at once, and soon she was taken very ill.
human
She loved that worthless scoundrel so much?
gpt
I don't know. I don't think she knows. It was the destruction of an ideal which was terrible. She had clung to it. She had said to herself: 'Many men may be false, and mercenary, and unscrupulous, but this one is true.' Suddenly, he had ceased to exist for her. She stood alone in the world--in the dark.
human
Except for you.
gpt
Except for me, and a few friends,--one girl especially, who was heavenly to her. But the dearest girl friend can't make up for the loss of trust in a lover.
human
That's true. By Jove, I thought I had been roughly used, but it's nothing to this. I feel as if I knew your sister, somehow. I wonder, since you and she are such pals, that you can bear to leave her.
gpt
She wanted to be alone. She said she didn't feel at home in life any more, and it made her restless to be with anyone who knew her trouble, anyone who pitied her. I was ill too,--from sympathy, I suppose, and--she thought a tramp like this would do me good. So it has. Being close to nature, especially among mountains, as I've been for weeks now, makes one's troubles and even one's sister's troubles seem small.
human
You are young to feel that.
gpt
My soul isn't as young as my body. Maybe that's why nature is so much to me. I am more alive when I'm away from big towns. Sunrises and sunsets are more important than the rising and falling of money markets. They--and the wind in the trees. What things they say to you! You can't explain; you can only feel. And when you _have_ felt, when you have heard colour, and seen sounds, you are never quite the same, quite as sad, again,--I mean if you _have_ been sad.
human
I've said all that--precisely that--to myself lately, I exclaimed, forgetting that I was a man talking to a child. The strange little person whom I had apostrophised as
gpt
Brat seemed not only an equal, but a superior. I found myself intensely interested in him, and all that concerned him.
human
Odd, that you, too, should have thought that thing about colour and sound! This evening-blue, for instance. Do you hear the music of it?
gpt
Yes. I'm not sure it isn't that which has made me answer your questions. But now let's talk of something else--or better still, let's not talk at all, for a while.