“But it has its disadvantages,” insisted Mrs. Aldwinkle. “For example, you can’t imagine how much I suffer when people round me are suffering, particularly if I feel myself in any way to blame. When I’m ill, it makes me miserable to think of servants and nurses and people having to sit up without sleep and run up and down stairs, all because of me. I know it’s rather stupid; but, do you know, my sympathy for them is so … so … profound, that it actually prevents me from getting well as quickly as I should.…”
“Dreadful,” said Chelifer in his polite, precise voice.
“You’ve no idea how deeply all suffering affects me.” She looked at him tenderly. “That day, that first day, when you fainted—you can’t imagine….”
“I’m sorry it should have had such a disagreeable effect on you,” said Chelifer.
“You would have felt the same yourself—in the circumstances,” said Mrs. Aldwinkle, uttering the last words in a significant tone.
Chelifer shook his head modestly. “I’m afraid,” he answered, “I’m singularly stoical about other people’s sufferings.”
“Why do you always speak against yourself?” asked Mrs. Aldwinkle earnestly. “Why do you malign your own character? You know you’re not what you pretend to be. You pretend to be so much harder and dryer than you really are. Why do you?”
Chelifer smiled. “Perhaps,” he said, “it’s to re-establish the universal average. So many people, you see, try to make themselves out softer and damper than they are. Don’t they?”
Mrs. Aldwinkle ignored his question. “But you,” she insisted, “I want to know about you.” She stared into his face. Chelifer smiled and said nothing. “You won’t tell me?” she went on. “But it doesn’t matter. I know already. I have an intuition about people. It’s because I’m so sensitive. I feel their character. I’m never wrong.”
“You’re to be envied,” said Chelifer.