“Avery,” she said. She could say no more.
“I asked if he would teach me,” he told her, “and he did. But when he understood the depth of my desire and need and commitment, he taught me infinitely more than what you have just seen. He taught me that my body could be all in all to me, but only if my mind was under my own power and control, and only if I laid claim to the soul—he called it my real self—at the core of me. He taught me to impose my will upon my body, to make it do whatever I directed it to do. He taught me to make it into a weapon, a potentially deadly weapon, though I only demonstrated those abilities upon inanimate objects—and one tree. But he taught me, to go hand in hand with that physical power, self-control. For any deadly weapon does not have to be used—ever. It is very much best for everyone if it never is. Nothing is ever gained from violence but the brutalization of those who perpetrate it and those who are provoked into seeking revenge against it.”
“You could have killed him if you had wished, could you not?” she asked him, hugging her elbows more tightly.
“Uxbury?” he said. “I was not even tempted, Anna. I merely wanted to put an end to the idiocy as quickly as possible and get away from there. The thing is, you see, that when you know you have power, you do not need to demonstrate it. When you know you have a weapon that is proof against most aggression, you do not need to use it. And you do not have to boast of it or even talk of it. It is a secret I have always kept strictly to myself. I am not sure why. Perhaps at first I feared ridicule or being thought weird. And when people started to treat me differently, I accepted that as good enough, and the secret of how much my life had changed seemed like a precious thing that might only be sullied if I spoke of it.”
“The bullying stopped?” she asked.
“Strangely it did,” he said, “though no one knew of the existence of that Chinese gentleman or of the long hours I spent with him. I fought no one except during the regular boxing and fencing sessions, at which I never excelled. I said nothing to anyone. And yet . . . the bullying stopped. People fear me or at least stand in considerable awe of me, but they do not know why—or did not before that lamentably public duel. When you believe in yourself, Anna, when you are in command of yourself, when nothing derogatory anyone says of you or to you has the power to arouse your anger or any desire to retaliate, people seem to sense it and respect you.”
“But what has been the cost to you of your secret life?” she asked him.
He gazed at her for several moments before answering. “Everything in life comes at a cost,” he said. “One has to weigh what one gains against what one gives up. I have gained immeasurably more than I have lost, Anna. Freedom from bullying was the most minor benefit of my transformation.”
“But no one knows you,” she said. “You have deliberately shaped your adult life so that you are unknown and unknowable.”
“I was unknown before,” he said. “I was not that timid, puny little boy any more than I am now the invincible warrior. Not inside myself. Inside myself I am still me, as I have always been. I do my living in here, Anna.” He patted one lightly clenched fist against his breastbone. “But I am not a hermit.”
She gazed at him, still hugging herself.
He leaned to one side and grasped another cushion, which he set down in front of him. “Come,” he said, reaching up a hand for hers.
“Oh, I cannot sit like that,” she protested.
“With those skirts? No,” he agreed. “I shall have an outfit like my own made for you to wear here in this room, Anna, if you wish. I have let you in, you see, to this room where no one comes except me. The room is a sort of symbol. What I have really let you into is my life, myself as I am, and at the moment, Anna, I am that little boy again. For I cannot control you or the way you will deal with what I have told you and shown you, and I would not if I could, but I am terrified. Yes, sit thus. I like looking across at you rather than up—or down.”
She was sitting on the cushion, hugging her knees, which were drawn up in front of her. Her feet were touching one of his ankles. He looked at them and then raised them one at a time to remove her slippers and her silk stockings before tucking her feet beneath his crossed ones.
“Shoes keep one at a remove from reality,” he said, looking up into her eyes. He smiled and leaned across his folded legs and hers to kiss her. “I am still terrified. I have been since we returned to London and I was faced with the reality that I am a married man and have absolutely no idea how to proceed. I am in deep and out of my depth. And I have not been doing well. The wonder of those two weeks after our wedding has vanished and I fear it has gone forever. I want it back. How do we get it back, Anna? Have you felt its loss too?”