“No; it depends on you,” Barney quickly replied.
“She likes you, quite immensely, already. She says you make her think of one of Meredith’s dry, deep-hearted heroes,” Barney gave a slightly awkward laugh, deprecating the homage as he offered it. “She says you are the soul of truth. There’s no reason, none whatever, why you shouldn’t be the best of friends, as far as she is concerned. It’s all she asks.”
“It’s all I ask, of course.”
“Yes, I know. But if you don’t meet her half-way? Sometimes I do see what Palgrave means. Sometimes you misunderstand her.”
“Very likely. It takes time really to understand people, doesn’t it.”
But poor Barney was embarked and could not but push on. “As just now, you know, about finding nobility behind every bush and paying for one’s goodness by losing one’s discrimination. There are deep realities and superficial realities, aren’t there, and she sees the deep ones first. It’s more than that. Palgrave says she makes reality. He didn’t say it to me, because I don’t think he feels me to be worthy of her. He said it to Mother, and puzzled her by it. But I know what he means. It’s because of that he feels her to be a sort of saint. Do be straight with me, Roger. Say what you really think. I’d rather know; much. You’ve never kept things from me before,” Barney added in a sudden burst of boyish distress.
“My dear Barney,” Oldmeadow murmured.
It had to come, then. He pushed back his chair and turned in it, resting an arm on the table; and he passed his hand over his head and kept it there while he stared for a moment hard at the ceiling.
“I think you’ve made a mistake,” he then said.
“A mistake?” Barney faltered blushing. It was not anger; it was pain, simple, boyish pain that thus confessed itself.