"You're a little hard on me, you know," he said.
"I don't understand how you can do it," she said.
"Do what?"
"Forget all your finer feelings, and make a trade of it."
"I don't make a trade of it," he said, hotly. "You cannot separate the good from the bad. You must take us just as we are—or leave us."
The words came from him quietly, almost unconsciously, as though in an unguarded moment his tongue had taken advantage of his thoughts. She turned her face sideways to his, and he was conscious of a queer look in her eyes—an expression which was absolutely foreign to them. He saw doubt, uncertainty and surprise in the swift glance of a moment. "I ought not to have said that," he thought to himself. And, then, hard upon that, defiantly, "I don't care what she thinks; it's what I thought."
The expression in her eyes softened. Though he had said nothing more, it was as if he had subtly communicated to her that which was passing in his mind.
"Yes," she said, with softness in her voice, "we must take the good with the bad, but we must separate the sincere from the insincere. I saw you that day in the forest when your eyes showed how you felt the pity of it all—and yet, you see, you did not put that in The Day. You did not write as you felt."
So that was her explanation. How could he make her comprehend the conflict that was for ever in his mind, and even his explanation could not redeem him in her eyes.
John Davidson's verse ran through his mind like a dirge:—