She hesitated, still smiling compunction upon him, and, still gently, as if with a little humorousness for the trite virtue of the word, Maurice supplied “True?”
“Well, yes; to yourself I mean. I mustn’t be your standard. You must have your own.”
“Ah, you mustn’t ask that of me. I loved you, you know, for what I lacked.”
“But I do ask it of you,” said Felicia, and, leaning against his shoulder, glad to have him look with her at the well-unravelled little knot, she went on: “You see, in your kindness you aren’t really fair to him—nor to me either! He was quite cross with me just now when I tried to dissuade him—quoted your opinion of the article. And he has sent it to the magazine you recommended—oh, Maurice, I was displeased!”
She put her cheek against his head. To confess her displeasure seemed to efface its cause; especially when Maurice kissed her hand and repeated, with touching surrender to her fastidiousness, “Please forgive me. I’ll never do it any more.”
Perhaps, because of a certain individuality in its violence, the essay on “Credulity” was accepted, and Mr. Merrick’s assurance, which had been rather pricked and ruffled since his arrival in London, was restored to its unstable placidity.
Felicia was conscious of a consequent triumph in his manner towards herself.
“The old sword isn’t rusty yet,” said Mr. Merrick; “it can still do execution. I fancy it has lopped the heads off a few more falsehoods.”
Felicia was silent; she understood that Maurice perforce must smile; and with these necessary smiles, hostages to the past, went Maurice’s new endeavour “not to do it again,” that by degrees revealed to Mr. Merrick that Maurice, no more than Felicia, was to be counted upon.
Maurice’s geniality deserted him one day when Mr. Merrick made an assault upon the non-rational elements in the faith of a Roman Catholic friend, and next morning Felicia, arranging some books in the studio, heard in the adjacent dining-room her father’s pugnacious tones: “The fellow is merely an ass; I wonder you can tolerate him. I pinned him with his winking virgin!”