"With your powerful mind you must feel independent of help, of advice, of society."
"So be it, since it pleases you."
She smiled. She pursued her embroidery carefully and quickly, but her eyelash twinkled, and then it glittered, and then a drop fell.
Mr. Moore leaned forward on his desk, moved his chair, altered his attitude.
"If it is not so," he asked, with a peculiar, mellow change in his voice, "how is it, then?"
"I don't know."
"You do know, but you won't speak. All must be locked up in yourself."
"Because it is not worth sharing."
"Because nobody can give the high price you require for your confidence. Nobody is rich enough to purchase it. Nobody has the honour, the intellect, the power you demand in your adviser. There is not a shoulder in England on which you would rest your hand for support, far less a bosom which you would permit to pillow your head. Of course you must live alone."
"I can live alone, if need be. But the question is not how to live, but how to die alone. That strikes me in a more grisly light."