"She was in such a state that one simply had to try to comfort her,—if one could,—and we have come to be such friends;—so she told me everything."
"Yes. Of course."
"Well that's just it. What I want to ask you is—can't you, for her sake, quite apart from your own feelings—give in about it?" So spoke Sir Basil, sitting in the moonlight, the spark of his cigar waning as, in the long pause that followed, he held it, forgotten, in an expectant, arrested hand. Her voice had helped and followed him with such gentleness, such understanding that, though the pause grew, he hardly thought that it needed the added, "I do beg it of you," that he brought out presently to make her acquiescence more sure; and his shock of disappointment was sharpened by surprise to a quick displeasure when, her eyes passing from his face and resting for long on the shadowy woods, she said in a deadened voice, a voice strangely lacking in feeling:—"I can't."
He couldn't conceal the disappointment nor, quite, the displeasure. "You can't? Really you can't?—Forgive me, but don't you think she's a right to have it written, her father's life, you know, if she feels so deeply about it?"
"I can't. I will never give my consent," Valerie repeated.
"But, she's breaking her heart over it," Sir Basil deeply protested; and before the quality of the protestation she paused again, as though to give herself time to hide something.
"I know that it is hard for her," was all she said at last.
Protestation gave way to wonder, deep and sad. "And for her sake—for my sake, let me put it—you can't let bygones be bygones?—You can't give her her heart's desire?—My dear friend, it's such a little thing."
"I know that. But it's for his sake that I can't," said Valerie.
Sir Basil, at this, was silent, for a long time. Perplexity mingled with his displeasure, and the pain of failure, the strangely complex pain.