“About myself. I don’t do it often—let me now. Do you think I haven’t realized all along that what you said of me is true—that I have done nothing? Done nothing but succeed smugly in keeping myself in comfort outside the modern economic treadmill! What else could I do? I’m no orator, to convince other people. I haven’t any universal panacea to offer! I’m only an inarticulate countryman, a farmer’s son, with the education the state gives everyone—who am I, to try to lead? Apparently there was nothing for me to do but ignobly to take care of myself—but now, God be thanked! I have my chance. Someone has been hurt in their infernal squirrel-cage, and I can help—”
The older man was looking at him piercingly, as though struck by a sudden thought. He now cut him short with, “You’re not deceiving yourself with any notion that she—”
The other answered quickly, with a smile of bitter humility: “You have seen her look at me. She does not know whether I am a human being or not—I am to her any strong animal, a horse, an ox—any force that can carry Ariadne safely!” He added, in another tone, his infinitely gentle tone: “I see in that the extremity of her anxiety.”
The doctor put his hand on the other man’s powerful arm. “Do you realize what you are proposing to yourself? You are human. You are a young man. Are you strong enough to keep to it?”
Rankin looked at him. Mrs. Sandworth leaned forward.
“I am,” said Rankin finally.
The words echoed in a long silence.
The younger man stood up. “I am going to see a lawyer,” he announced in a quiet voice of return to an everyday level. “Until then, we have all more to think over than to talk about, it seems to me.”
After he had left them the brother and sister did not speak for a time. Then the doctor said, irritably: “Julia, say something, for Heaven’s sake. What did you think of what he said?”