"It is only too true," said Amroth; "you enjoyed your perplexity; I daresay you called it faith to yourself! It was that which made you weak. You lost your temper with Lucius, you made a miserable fight of it—and even in prison you could not recognise that you were in fault. You did better at the trial—I fully admit that you behaved well there—but the fault is in this, that this girl gave you her heart and her confidence, and you despised them. Your mind was taken up with other things; a very little more, and you would be fit for the intellectual paradise. There," he said, "I have nearly done! You may be angry if you will, but that is the truth. You have a wrong idea of this place. It is not plain sailing here. Life here is a very serious, very intricate, very difficult business. The only complications which are removed are the complications of the body; but one has anxious and trying responsibilities all the same, and you have trifled with them. You must not delude yourself. You have many good qualities. You have some courage, much ingenuity, keen interests, and a good deal of conscientiousness; but you have the makings of a dilettante, the readiness to delude yourself that the particular little work you are engaged in is excessively and peculiarly important. You have got the proportion all wrong."
I had a feeling of intense anger and bitterness at all this; but as he spoke, the scales seemed to fall from my eyes, and I saw that Amroth was right. I wrestled with myself in silence.
Presently I said, "Amroth, I believe you are right, though I think at this moment that you have stated all this rather harshly. But I do see that it can be no pleasure to you to state it, though I fear I shall never regain my pleasure in your company."
"There," said Amroth, "that is sentiment again!"
This put me into a great passion.
"Very well," I said, "I will say no more. Perhaps you will just be good enough to tell me what I am to do with Cynthia, and where I am to go, and then I will trouble you no longer."
"Oh," said Amroth with a sneer, "I have no doubt you can find some very nice semidetached villas hereabouts. Why not settle down, and make the poor girl a little mote worthy of yourself?"
At this I turned from him in great anger, and left him standing where he was. If ever I hated any one, I hated Amroth at that moment. I went back to Cynthia.
"I have come back to you, dear," I said. "Can you trust me and go with me? No one here seems inclined to help us, and we must just help each other."
At which Cynthia rose and flung herself into my arms.