After a moment's pause he said: 'You say everything's changed. In a way it is. I look at things differently—I regard them differently. When you've been up against it, and seen life and death pretty close, you realise what utter rot it is to live so much for the world.'
Edith stared. 'But … doesn't it make you feel all the more the importance of principle—goodness and religion, and all that sort of thing? I expected it would, with you.'
'Frankly, no; it doesn't. Now, let us look at the situation quietly.'
After an agitated pause he went on:
'As far as I make out, you're sacrificing yourself to Bruce. When he ran away with that girl, and begged you to divorce him, you could have done it. You cared for me. Everything would have been right, even before the world. No-one would have blamed you. Yet you wouldn't.'
'But that wasn't for the world, Aylmer; you don't understand. It was for myself. Something in me, which I can't help. I felt Bruce needed me and would go wrong without me—'
'Why should you care? Did he consider you?'
'That isn't the point, dear boy. I felt as if he was my son, so to speak—a sort of feeling of responsibility.'
'Yes, quite. It was quixotic rubbish. That's my opinion. There!'
Edith said nothing, remembering he was still ill.